However, what you -- and many people -- do not acknowledge is the singular importance in the development of those ideals into what has become the American vision of English philosophy and the classical liberal tradition which is almost exclusively the product of the British Isles. With respect to all of the other cultures and languages that go into the American melting pot, lose the essentially Anglo-Saxon attachement to individual rights and liberty, the Anglo-Saxon nonconformists suspicion of state religion, and the commitment to empiricism and an essentially Whig intepretation of history, and you will destroy this country.
Continental philosophy - whether the Thomist synthesis, Cartesianism or the later German and French system-builders just don't do the same things, they are compatible with fascism and tyranny in a way English thought is not. Come ye from anywhere, be ye of any creed or color, but understand, for all our faults, we've got the basics right here -- don't mess with them.
Philosophy and traditions which standing alone would not survive if not for the millions of diverse Americans whose limbs and lives maintained these ideals alive.