The Enlightenment was no more run by anyone than the tea party is. It was, as the article claims, a flowering of ideas that greatly improved the condition of those fortunate to have been exposed to them. That it didn't end war is no grounds to denigrate it. What an odd comment.
The Founding Fathers spoke effectively from the writings of John Locke, a British Enlightenment philosopher. They cited Philosophers of that time. Benjamin Franklin, a political philosopher was in his own bet against European challengers that there could be an effective Republic created in America.
In the various colonial wars of independence, Haitian, Dominican, and even South American revolutionaries cited the statements of Enlightenment Philosophers as justification for their revolutions against the European colonial powers.