[Torie]

Voltaire was an atheist rationalist. He was used by radicals in France, and things got off the rails. But the founding fathers, the intellectual ones, admired both French and Scottish philosophers. Montesquieu was a big hit, as he is to this day. Gary Wills however has written a book that the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers were the most influential, as well they should. Edinburgh for a brief period was a fantastic gleaming city on the hill, at least of the mind.

[KC Burke]

Montesquieu has always been classified as one of the few French in the Scottish/English tradition as opposed to the bulk of the French. I really must recommend Himmelfarb's The Road to Modernity: The British, French and American Enlightements which shows the main thrust of my point. But to get back to the issue I took with your comment, the "enlightement" in normal discourse in this country dismisses all but the French as having impact. The distictions and the differences are so broad as to make them almost in total conflict with each other. I often make the same point with liberals that Dennis P. does and most everyone runs to defend sentiments that are totally of the French variety of the enlightenment.