I have a great deal of respect for the founding fathers and their vision. Reading the Federalist Papers and a lot of the early documents, you'll see they were often at odds with each other and had completely different ideas from person to person. They figured something out that worked better than I think any of them would have expected in the long term.
That said, no regime is bound to last forever. I find it hard to be a conservative in a world that seems to have very little worth conserving. Our government has become evil and corrupt beyond anything even remotely acceptable, and the constitution didn't save us. The principles that our country was founded on was tailor-made for a nation that no longer exists. I'm afraid the modern American people are incapable of handling the kind of system envisioned all those years ago. I don't see a democratic republic functioning with the way people are today, especially people my age and younger. Our culture is a cesspool.
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” - John Adams
Um, it has to be applied in order to be effective. If most people don't even know what it is, don't understand the protections it offers, and if tptb are corrupt, of course it's going to seem to be useless. Use it in every instance you can, at every opportunity. I bet you've never relied on the constitution in any of your day to day life situations.