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Well, no. It wasn't founded as a European civilization, it was founded first as an extension of the British Empire and later as an explicit rejection of traditional European civilization. Enlightenment ideals were certainly European in origin, but they were specifically northern, Protestant European in origin at the very widest definition, and for all practical purposes were English and Scottish in origin. The Italians, Hungarians, Poles, etc. had little to nothing to do with Enlightenment thought. And in practice most of Europe was living under a system much more illiberal than that which the colonists were rebelling against.
So to say that the American civilization was founded by Europeans may be a true statement, but if the founders had any nationalist tendencies at the time, they would have been limited to those of English and maybe Scottish or Dutch descent. Those who were wont to deny various outsider groups status as "real Americans" set their sights first on Swedes and German Protestants in the 18th century, then on Irish and German Catholics in the 19th, then on Poles, Italians, Greeks, Russians, Czechs, Slovaks, Rusyns, Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes in the early 20th. Is that the argument you're making now, that the only true inheritors of the American civilization are Anglo-Saxons? If not, why not?
Assuming that Cesare Beccaria ("... widely considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment... well remembered for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology... considered the father of modern criminal law and the father of criminal justice") does not cut it as Italian contribution to the Enlightenment, doesn't your definition of Enlightenment as "specifically northern, Protestant European" leave out a massive hole by the name of France? Descartes and Pascal, Diderot and d'Alembert, Condorcet, Buffon, Turgot, Montesquieu, Voltaire? (And Rousseau, if we count French-speaking Switzerland EDIT: although admittedly, he was protestant) And there's much more if you also consider scientific and technological contributions, though I suppose this was specifically about intellectual/ideological developments.
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You are begging the question and in fact proving my point. Nobody considers the rise of American hegemony to be a break from "Western Civilization"; America is included in that fold despite those liberal innovations in its intellectual tradition. The continuity between the British Empire and American Empire within the broader framework of Western Civilization proves my argument that the West is not defined by a grand intellectual tradition, it's defined by the behavior of European people which has formulated different intellectual ideas at different points of time and in different contexts.
In the American context, liberalism can and should be seen an an innovation on the organization of power, and a (largely post-hoc) intellectual justification for rebellion and legitimacy, with Social Contract theory being hardly less of a "noble lie" than the Divine Right.
An intellectual tradition is a tool of a people or civilization to coordinate behavior and consensus, and justify the use of power. But it's dynamic, an intellectual tradition does not define a civilization.
The entire point is that post-Christianity and post-liberalism may be necessary for the future of Western Civilization. The emergence of liberalism itself proves that radicalism may be conducive for the growth of Civilization if it improves upon or replaces deficiencies with traditional ways of thinking.
Hlynka's arguments could have been, and were, cited by Loyalist traditionalists who opposed the emergence of secular, radical, liberal political thinking. He probably would have opposed those liberal radicals questioning the Divine-Right precepts of Western Civilization in those days.
You're missing my point. I'm not arguing that America is a break from "Western Civilization", I'm arguing that "Western Civilization" is too broad a concept to consider as the basis for nationhood, as is evidenced by the fact that America's founders certainly didn't see it that way (they were arguing for liberal principles, not that the colonies were a separate nation from Britain), and to the extent that some of them did view it as a nation, their conception of that nation was limited to exclude most Europeans. In any event, it still doesn't account for why the alt-right excludes Jews, despite them being as Western as anyone else on the list.
The alt-right sees jews as adversaries, and responsible for harming the country / going against what they think Western civilization should be.
For example, regarding foreign policy:
Skittish Jew Dweeb Blinken Says “Viscerally, Most Americans Don’t Like a Big Country Bullying Another”
[...]
Here's a compilation of reactions to a fundraiser for the ADL, an organization promoting antisemitism:
Fundamentally, the alt-righters see the ADL and other groups as opposed to their interests.
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Your argument, read over several posts, seems to be that where we "draw the line" on who assimilates into the American nation is largely arbitrary and has changed over the centuries. In support of this point you mention the different immigrant groups people have complained about over the years, which, of course, has included many different sorts of non-Anglo-Saxon white people. And you accurately mention that the origins of American civilization are specifically English and Northwestern European Protestant, not Italian, Hungarian, Polish, etc.
Where I disagree with you is that "Western Civilization," i.e. European origin, is too broad of a concept for the basis of nationhood, or that the conception of that nation truly excluded most Europeans. In 1790 Congress restricted naturalization to white people, not to "English and Dutch and Scottish Protestant liberals" or "Anglo-Saxons." Similar naturalization restrictions continued until well within living memory--even when the laws favored Northwestern Europeans after 1924, the other allowed groups were still Europeans, even if Southern and Eastern Europeans were considered less desirable Europeans. Non-Westerners were not allowed at all! Here's how the Supreme Court thought of the question in 1923 when debating the naturalization of an Indian man:
In the US, there was a historically-recognized kinship between the many different types of people who made up "Western Civilization," and rather than being too broad, this concept was successfully used to create nationhood.
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