Pietism and Foreign Policy

In reading McLoughlin's article, "Pietism and the American Character,"  I found most of the same points that have already been iterated in both Mary Ryan, Amy Frykholm, and Nathan Hatch's articles: the American culture has been shaped much more than people imagine by ideas rooted in religion and religious movements.  He again addressed the ideas of individuality coming out of the Second Great Awakening and leading to greater ideas of capitalism, as well as an American commitment to social justice venues such as abolition and even education.  However, I think the point which struck me the most, as I had honestly never considered it, was that of American foreign policy and piety.  He defines American Pietism as, "the belief that every individual is himself responsible for deciding the rightness and wrongness of every issue in terms of a higher moral law,"  and that this comes with the knowledge that one must decide how to act based upon said rightness or wrongness.   He goes on to claim that Americans have transferred this concept into foreign policy, acting as a "world police"  of idealistic ideas.  Every militaristic endeavor the United States has performed, he argues, has sprung out of a question of ideology, of right and wrong.  Without this basis, he argues, Americans would be unwilling to participate in military operations.  However, with the lens of piety, it is the Americans duty to enforce a moralistic law that binds not only people, but nations of the world.  I was struck by this because of how much truth I find in it.   Americans are not always what I would consider to be "right" in their military efforts.  For example, I am completely opposed to actions the United States took following the cold war in Central America, directly supporting governments which we knew abused the human rights of, and murdered their own citizens.  However, such actions were performed under the justification that any threat of communism needed to be stopped, for it was a threat to freedom and liberty in the world.   This is just one example to me of how McLaughlin's idea reigns true for America, and I think it will change how I look at foreign policy in the future, as I try and learn about our foreign policy with a lens of asking what ideological values we are trying to uphold as a nation in the world.