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> You can't use modern value judgements unless you want a dissonant argument

This is my whole point! It's dissonant. There is no point in holding to the purist ideals of a document, if the authors themselves wrote it to ignore the invconvenient facts of life. Some people talk of the authors like they're some sort of demigods, and therefore any of their utterances are uncontestable. Highlighting dissonance like this is important it countering this trend.

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It's worth noting they were well aware of the contradiction and slavery mainly got a pass to avoid an immediate civil war with the southern colonies. So yeah, they made choices for purposes of political expediency, but they weren't totally unaware of the contradiction. Thomas Jefferson was actually in sort of a "tough" spot (I say this without sympathy or defense) because it was widely recognized in his intellectual circles that slavery was wrong and against the many ideas he and his peers espoused, but his own personal wealth was so tied up in it that he had to make intellectual excuses for it (see Notes on the State of Virginia).

There's no point to holding to the purist ideals of the document because the authors didn't uphold it fully? That's illogical.

Reading only half a comment and forming your conclusion from that? That's illogical.

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