The real scandal: the Colonists severed their ties with Britain, and the United States of America were founded to make sure that people like Obama and their confused and dangerous thinking - basically copying European social democracy / socialism - could never hold sway over the nation.
As for the first sentence in the below article, it is certainly a sign of lack of education, an embarrassing lack thereof in a constitutional scholar that Obama claims to be, to reduce the roots of American libertarian attitudes and accomplishments to the "English tradition". Of course, there are great Welsh, Irish and English contributions to the philosophy and practice of liberty, but it is clearly erroneous to emphasis the English aspect exclusively, while it would never be inappropriate to highlight the extraordinary significance of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Barack Obama should learn a little more history before his next visit – history about America, that is, not Britain. “Our founding institutions were profoundly shaped by the English tradition,” he said outside No10 today. Not quite. It was profoundly shaped by the Scottish Enlightenment (see here for more) – and one of the great ironies of history is that America was moulded along Adam Smith’s lines while Scotland imported the disastrous ideas of the French Enlightenment which continue to dominate discourse today. The "answers" to society, argued Scots such as Smith, Adam Ferguson and Francis Hutcheson, are held by mankind in general - not by any elite purporting to represent "the people". The best way to improve a country is for government to uphold a few laws, then get out of the way and let the people do the rest. Essentially, the Scots Enlightenment stood for individual liberty and small government while the French one stood for power, and big government. The French wanted to seize power with a big bang; the Scots wanted to dismantle centrally-held power and let people adopt a gradual approach to the best government. That so many people in Europe still believe the French principles (government virtuous, masses selfish) shows how this continent never could quite shake off the hierarchies. But it is the agenda of the Scottish Enlightenment - as enacted by the US Constitution - which make the slogan of “liberty, fraternity and equality” real.
See allso USA Founded to Avoid Obama (2/2)
