The political component of this is not the standard PC argument about whether discussing genetics is racist. The political component of this is patriotism. Every day we as a nation make choices about what kind of behavior to reward and to celebrate. Right now, we seem to have elevated dysfunctional stupidity -- of the supposedly "moral" religious variety and of the supposedly immoral celebreality variety -- as the quickest route to fame. We have also embraced (well, not recently, but you know what I mean) a president who openly denigrates the value of education. In doing so, we tell our males that they can gain esteem, status and power by acting like idiots. We discourage females from seeking intelligent, educated males and encourage them to seek the idiots: Those likely to reap society's rewards of status, wealth and power.

If we continue this trend, for generation after generation, what will we turn America into? We saw a preview of it in a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that tracked the correlation between institutional southern ignorance and the social price paid. We're already starting to lose ground to other cultures -- Indian, Asian, European -- that value intelligence more than we do. Their economies and lifestyles and achievements increasingly rival, and sometimes surpass, our own.

Every time we make a choice about what we value, every time we buy something, praise something, ridicule something, discuss something, we're choosing either to help strengthen our country or to weaken it.