Conservatives are manifestation of Carnal Man.

You can probably picture the stereotypical 1960's hippie-- the kind of person caught up in experimentation with drugs and sex and seeking to overthrow everything. This kind of person is sort of a manifestation of pure carnality. Someone who rebels against just about everything related to "traditional" morality. It's the sort of person that church-folks have been trying to call to repentance for the hippie's own spiritual and physical well-being, and maybe even the good of society.

Before I go any further, I want to say that the stereotypical 1990's Angry White Male is every bit as much a manifestation of carnality. He hates being told how to drive his car or what kind of car to drive, likes his sexual-laden and politically incorrect jokes, likes to swear, hates actually paying for the services he gets from the government (wants tax cuts to create deficits), hates being told how to talk to minorities and women, how to interact with the poor, where he can smoke, how the rule of law might require restraint in dealing with the enemies of his country or neighborhood. This carnality, this hatred of restraint, is every bit as much opposed to the actual old church tradition as is the 60's hippie. My view is that this is part of the reason men aren't in church.

The problem is that somehow the latter got associated with the bible-believing Christian Church sometime in the latter half of the 20th century. Too often efforts to call this sort of carnality to repentance are alleged to stem from mere hatred of the conservative, or maybe hatred of self and God. I've been seeing this a lot in defense of President Bush over the past few years.

Now the premise that both the 60's hippie and the 90's Angry White Male are rebelling against common decency and the Lord's commandments doesn't say anything about which laws should be passed or how to vote (at least in general elections, once the primaries have picked candidates). But it does say something about the intractableness of politics.