Actually hating the FRENCH is one thing that binds us together... England irritates me occasionally, but I don't worry about being shot in the back by you chaps. I like to think of America as being an extension of English liberty, not a break away from a non-free culture.
Quite right. So the Americans of the Revolution saw it, and more than a few of their English contemporaries.
It was an Englishman, not two years off the boat, who propagandized for American independence in Common Sense.