Josh at TPM has got a new Christianist Dog Whistle catch from Hucklebee's campaign, and I think he's underplaying it. It sounds simple to the point of simplistic (like a lot of Hucky's stuff) but it is a deep and foul pit indeed once you dig into it.

The word is "Vertical." Josh has a screen shot with the quote "I think the country is looking for somebody who is vertical, who is thinking, Let's take America up and not down."

So what is a "vertical thinker" anyway? Horizontal brings to mind Fred Thompson, but resist that thought and think in terms of society, and communities, and how we organize ourselves and agree to follow certain rules: i.e., government.

The short? "Vertical" means that rules--which is to say laws--come down from God Above, and all we can, and should, and must do is obey them. "Horizontal" thinking by contrast is what us old time freethinkers thought was the social contract, agreements, the coming together of people to agree, one person one vote, on what the laws would be.

Not in Huck's world. Josh has a couple of other links but this one I found particularly interesting. Go read the whole thing if you want to be revolted out of your socks: this guy wants to have the Missouri court system execute a kid because to fail to do so would be to offend against God.

Pastor Matt Bohling of a Presbyterian (!) church in Missouri, arguing why it is wrong and evil for a Missouri court to rule against executing a juvenile for murder:

Like all sin, murder is first and foremost against God and His righteous and good rule over us through His law. David stands as our model of this even having been a luster, then an adulterer, and then a murderer he declares in Psalm 51:4, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.” Surely David sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah but his heart rightly saw that the vertical sin and vertical culpability were of far greater weight than the horizontal effects of his sin. This kind of thinking is completely lost on the Missouri Court.

Ya think? Maybe because they are the court of the State of Missouri in the United States of America, not the sharia of Pastor Bumblefuck's absolutest tradition? He continues

There is no vertical thinking in their argument only horizontal thinking. If we were to summarize their argument it would be this, “People don’t think juveniles should be executed so they shouldn’t be.” An evolving human standard of decency has eclipsed a divine standard of justice.