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My own view is that the American Experiment is fully bound up in, and inseparable from, the English and Scottish (at least) Enlightentments and our 'conservative' values today are the values that were seen as liberal, even radical, in their day: individual liberty, economic liberty, and religious tolerance.

I believe that you are entirely correct in your view, and have underscored a key point. The ideas of Frances Hutcheson, Lord Kames, and their more illustrious adherents formed the intellectual foundation for the organization of American society, laws, and governance. Of course, tied to liberty, was a complementary belief in individual responsiblity (as you say, egalitarinism of opportunity). Jefferson, as the embodiment of these enlightenment principles, is therefore, the principle target of those who would have them devalued, debunked, and cast aside in favor of their own view of an enlighted society bound up in a much different philisophical tradition expoused by the Socialist, Marxists, et. al.