Time for a very serious question...

I'm riding in to work, and listening to the morning time slot on my satellite radio... which belongs to Glenn Beck. He's talking almost exclusively about his "8-28" rally in DC this weekend (the anniversary of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech... not because of Hurricane Katrina, which also has an anniversary that day), but he touches on an aspect of "conservative, Christian" understanding that people (meaning mankind in general) are NOT inherently good, but are instead inherently "not good". He said (more than once) that the Bible says "dark is the heart of man"... but I don't know what verse he is quoting, or if it is in the Bible at all.

Then, on the way home, I'm listening to Levin, and the guest host there says "man is NOT inherently good", no matter what Reagan may have said to the contrary. I KNOW Reagan wasn't a Catholic... but surely the Calvinist view that all that is material is "evil" can't be so pervasive as to have become "mainstream" even in the eyes of American politicians?

Or am I wrong? Didn't Aquinas define man as created in all goodness, but wounded in nature because of consequences of original sin? Wasn't the premise that man was inherently BAD the fundamental error in both Luther and Calvin's theology? If man ISN'T inherently GOOD, then what does the sacrifice of Christ change in US to make us worthy of heaven? We are created, body and soul, in God's holy Image... the theological term for this is ex nihilo, or "out of nothing", meaning "deliberately made" by God's hand for a purpose of His choosing... and I ask again, how we can be made thus but still be inherently not good?

Has Luther's "snow covered dung heaps" and Calvin's "tainted, spoiled fruit inside a perfect peel" become the understanding that Protestant America holds... inherently, it seems... about the very nature of mankind? My goodness... I can't have THAT be the standard by which I am measured if I am to be called a "conservative"... because I DO believe in the inherent "goodness" of Man as a creation of God in His perfect Image, even if that nature is "wounded" by concupiscence until such time as the stain is REMOVED entirely by baptism of either water, blood or intent.

Does anyone else share my distress at this prospective "heresy" remaining at the root of the current political movement I seem to be hitching my wagon to? Does anyone else think Man is inherently "bad"?