I'm a little thick this am.(there's a real suprise), could you expand on this.
Well, maybe someone else could give you a better explanation, still I will try to give it a shot.
I did not say anything especially original. It is a well established approach among people working on history of ideas, political theory, sociology etc, that the content of a dominating religion is having a critical impact on the whole society even if the society itself is not explicitely religious. That is why you hear about Protestant work ethics, or differences between Lutheran or Catholic parts of Europe for example. People working along those lines were Max Weber, Erich Fromm and many others.
The religion in question is Puritanism - a radical form of Calvinism which is responsible for many aspects of the American mindset. Calvinism (at least to some exten) asserts the predestination and division of the people into the elect and condemned. In its radical forms leads to the millenarian expectation of the the New Society, Beacon on the Hill purified from the evil by the purifying Puritans. Since the division between good and evil can be seen here as going between good and evil people the way of purifaction is obvious - kill the bad guys (like Irish papists under the Extirpation Act) and help the good win. Then the evil will be eradicated. Or in more moderate form the war on particular evil is proclaimed - like on alcohol drinking during the prohibition, on drugs or domestic violence etc, with the expectation of the Golden Age following the victory.
Of cource this approach is based on the profound ignorance of human nature where the border between good and evil goes through every human heart. In this sense Puritanism is sectarian ie it narrows and disects the Western traditional multidimensional concept of man and reduces it to the simple black and white stereotypes so well expressed, popularised and fortified by the Hollywood. The evil/badness/shadow present in everyone is projected into an enemy and the search for justice is expressed in Cromwellian military way, what always leads to the frustration and failure.
The best contrasting vision is provided by the great writer of the English language - Joseph Konrad Korzeniowski, who grew up in a Roman Catholic culture. For him the civilisation is the main tool which through the acumulated and carefuly preserved tradition restrains the evil impulses in man. But those impulses are never really eradicated and the situation of collapse, war or finding onself in the uncivilised surounding come to the surface. This training, slow and tedious taming is the only barrier which does not allow civilised Westerner from showing the face of a savage. When this fragile restraint is removed we enter the Heart of Darkness which could be seen in the Africa of the time of Conrad but which was in the past on banks of the Thames and which we might see again the future.
At least the original Calvinism posessed the awarness of human sinfulness. But in post-Puritan America the Enlightment doctrine of the basic goodness of man combined with the revolutionary fervor of revolt against tradition and selfish pursuit of happiness leads to the disguised nihilism combined with self-righteous hypocrisy and pseudo-moral rethoric.