What effect did the Enlightenment have on political thought in the colonies?

The Enlightenment encouraged rational thought over religious thought. As such, the Enlightenment served to create a social and political shift within the colonies from societies based strongly and almost solely in religion to societies that coupled aspects of Enlightenment thoughts with religion. For example, the early creation of town halls and political discussion halls and spaces were results of Enlightenment ideology. When colonists fought during the American Revolution, the leaders of the revolution used Enlightenment ideology to encourage people to enlist in the fight by proclaiming that the revolution would ensure more social, economic, and political liberties for the colonists. Of course, the Enlightenment thought around individual freedoms did not apply to the enslaved people of the colonies, indigenous people, or women considered to be the property of their husbands.

The Founding Fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, were strongly influenced by Enlightenment thought. Much of this influence was fostered by the ample time that both men spent in Parisian salons, where intellectuals mingled in the homes of wealthy patrons. There was a great deal of cultural exchange between French and American intellectuals in the late eighteenth century. Thomas Paine's Common Sense circulated through Paris, while the works of Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Denis Diderot were read by learned colonists.
One Enlightenment thinker who was a very important source of political thought was the Baron de Montesquieu, a legal philosopher. In The Spirit of the Laws (De L'esprit de Lois), he explained how a government could be separated into three branches, with each branch having the authority to check the power of the other—thereby establishing the American legal standard of "checks and balances." After the United States established the power of judicial review with the Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison (1803), giving American courts the power to strike down laws and any executive or legislative action that contradicts the Constitution, Montesquieu's vision of a society with equally balanced powers had come true.
The expansion of executive power, particularly in recent years, has concerned some because it disrupts the "checks and balances" system, threatening to tilt power too much in favor of the presidency. While Montesquieu's idea still stands, it remains unclear if the nation will sustain its practice.

The Enlightenment encouraged rational thought in all fields.  The world was supposed to be governed by specific principles and causal relationships.  One Enlightenment thinker was John Locke.  He was a philosopher who claimed that man was born equal to all his fellows and that there  should be no aristocracy or inherited government.  He also claimed that man had three natural rights—life, liberty, and property.  Furthermore, Locke claimed that government operated according to the social contract theory.  Government safeguarded the rights of people and provided a reasonable expectation of safety.  In return, people obeyed the government.  When either side of this equation was lost, the contract was void and should be renegotiated.  Locke contributed to the development of political thought in the colonies by helping create a system in which there was no inherited aristocracy.  His social contract theory of government was also tested in the years prior to the American Revolution, and the colonists found Britain in violation of their natural rights.  The Declaration of Independence even states that the people have a right to overthrow the government when it no longer safeguards natural rights.