My reading has led me to understand the founders' as having seen themselves as Whigs. This is why conservatives such as Hayek and Kirk use that term about themselves. The Whigish aversion to political systems corrupted by Arbitrary Application of Power or Arbitrary Power in general coulpled with the four generation long colonial practice of participatory self-government for the remote colonies gave them the model to which they continually refered.
I see many, from such reasonable libertarian sources as Cato, refering to these Whiggish traditions as libertarian and leaving out the Levelers, Diggers and Shays Rebellion crowd in telling the historical roots of Libertarianism. Fine, but if that is done, they shouldn't claim it exclusively.
Respect for government's limits is hardly hostility to government in all its manifestations.
If that is really the case for libertarianism in general, then why is hostility to government so central to the libertarian view outside Cato? Don't get me wrong, traditional conservatives see government as negative force, by and large, and only the State as ordained by that Enduring Moral Order to which most of us subscribe. But isn't being defined by the negative the same shortcoming to which conservatives are subjected?
Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty cited our true origination as along the Whig path of slow, organic, process and differentiated it from the Rationalist Totalitarian Democracy pattern. How often do we see libertarian writers falling into the camp of the rationalist, the enlightenment, and the ideologue? Perhaps too often, IMHO.
It matters little to me as to how many of our branches of conservatism claim the mantle of the founders tradition, just so long as that mantle is lifted from the dust, preserved and laid upon our shouders proudly as we stand and proclaim a path to constitutional restoration.
Names aren't nearly as important as action.