Just a note. As an historian, what I see now is the flowering of the British empire as Engliish fast becomes the lingua franca. Someone should help the British feel enormously gratified, instead of referring to themselves a just a poor litle country.
In a sense they are a "poor little country," considering that they are dwarfed by the US and even matched economically by Hong Kong.But as you say, the English-speaking US and all its other former colonies are standing on the shoulders of their British legacy. In that sense see the preamble to our Constitution and its usage, "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." If you limit the word "posterity" to one of its meanings, you think only of decendants.
But viewing "posterity" to mean "those who come after" rather than merely decendants, the legacy of the Founding Fathers would be secure even if, Heaven forefend, the US were to somehow fail as a polity. For the fact that the US has already endured for 200 years is proof of the concept of the stable democratic republic. Which was the minimum criterion for success of the "Great Experiment."