THE Democratic Unionist Party is a shining repository of moral good and crusading honour, surrounded on all sides by conspiracy, treachery and betrayal. The "Doc", the "Big Man", is the populist hero, fearless in denouncing traitors and collaborators, vigilant in defending the Holy Grail (the Union) against a threat that never diminishes.
It is a simple, almost comic book world view and morality play that allows only for good or evil, comrade or enemy, black or white and no shades in between. It doesn't change and it still sells - a formula that spares its adherents the stress of trying to come to terms with the bewildering complexity of belief systems, shades of meaning and the worrying reality of change and compromise in human affairs.
To remain viable in the political marketplace, such a simplistic even fundamentalist, political philosophy - if it can be so termed - requires the constant ministering of a charismatic leader. At the DUP conference on Saturday, the Rev Ian Paisley demonstrated that he still fills that role.
The dangers of populism - which were incisively analysed by the SDLP deputy leader, Mr Seamus Mallon, during that party's recent annual conference - lie in its pandering to and manipulation of the lowest common denominator, its fostering of extreme, absolutist and uncompromising attitudes.
Once it gains a foothold, it unleashes and commands huge emotive forces untrammelled by the distressing conscientious necessity to see the other person's point of view.
To keep this power offensive going, it is necessary to demonise your opponents, and there was plenty of that at the DUP conference. Speeches were liberally laced with personal abuse often verging on the sectarian.
The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, was the butt of some particularly venomous personal invective. Clearly, with an election on the way, the gloves are off, all prospects of unionist family unity are shelved, and it is every Pharisee for himself.
The fringe loyalist parties were also excoriated - incongruously described by Dr Paisley as "only the parrots and puppets of the IRA".
Yet there are strange contradictions and dichotomies in the DUP's apocalyptic revelation. As if to confirm that secular right is also the preserve of the militantly righteous, Dr Paisley asserted that the ethos of true Protestantism was enshrined in the party's constitution - "Every man equal under the law, and every man equally subject to the law".
He "disowned" the paramilitary associates of the fringe loyalist parties - "those who take concrete blocks to break the head of a Roman Catholic because he is a Roman Catholic". Yet in the same breath he used the term "Roman Catholic" as a pejorative adjective to ascribe ill intent and malevolence to various political figures.
It was, for the most part, depressingly familiar stuff - the mirror image, in some ways, of old style fundamentalist "Wrap the Green Flag Round Me" republicanism. And there were even parallels in Dr Paisley's astonishing and sentimental lyrical paean to the unchanging face of Ulster's coast and countryside.
"Old Slemish Mountain in the county of Antrim, "he declaimed, "is just the same as it was when our patron, St Patrick, followed the sheep up to its summit."
He lamented further, on the theme of: "How has our beloved province suffered". It was only, one might say, an arbitrary and artificial boundary away from Four Green Fields, and Old Ireland Free.
The pragmatically interesting side of all this knockabout good guys and bad guys ribaldry is that it is seductively artless enough to command the electoral support of a substantial section of the North's grassroots Protestant populace.
More than 141,000 people, or just under 19 per cent of those who voted in the Forum elections, plumped for DUP candidates. The upper limit potential of the party's support was probably demonstrated by the 230,000 first preference votes cast for Dr Paisley in the 1984 European Parliament election showing plainly that the charismatic pulling power of the Paisley personality on its own far exceeds the attraction of his party.
His vote was down dramatically to 160,000 first preferences in the 1989 Euro election. But although this might be read partly as a sign of a gradual slippage in support for fundamentalist views, history has shown that in a tight corner populism can always whip up deep seated fears and prejudices that will boost its appeal.
For the immediate future, Dr Paisley will represent - as he freely admits - a bulwark against change or political accommodation. Effectively, because of the simplistic and declamatory rhetoric he employs, he also stands against reconciliation.
The party delegates, winding up, sang: "There'll always be an Ulster, and Ulster shall be free". They went away not so much confirmed in a political philosophy as reassured that the Old Thunderer (to borrow a phrase) is still there to dispel doubts and hold a shifting and shiftless world at bay.