All humans are indeed created equal by their creator, but they are not endowed with the same abilities. This much should be self-evident to any person who is not self-evidently delusional. While the precise quantification of human intelligence and skills as yet remain beyond the grasp of science, our simple powers of observation inform us that some humans are born smarter than others, some are born stronger than others and, to use a controversial word, some are born better than others. While it is certainly true that a sufficiently determined individual can, from time to time, seemingly overcome the limits that the God of nature has imposed upon them it is equally true that the limits to our talents are, ultimately, contained entirely within us.

This fundamental truth is the elephant in the room of modern society. It is the desire of the powers that be that all people should be equal in practice, as well as in theory. How else could one explain an education system which seeks to teach essentially the same thing to our brightest and our stupidest? How else does one explain a culture that ridicules intelligence as a virtue and instead promotes all things base and crude?

Now, of course, people will throw the example of President Bush into my face. “How can you cite the value of intelligence,” they will say, “when your hero is an idiot?” The answer, of course, is that he isn’t one. No actually stupid person (all political invective aside) has ever been President, nor is one likely to hold the office. There are too many people who wish to be President and too many traps along the way to ever allow someone with a second-rate intellect to ever be elected to the office. So far as I can tell, the entire case for George W. Bush being “stupid” revolves around the fact that he occasionally mispronounces words and he got some C’s at Yale roughly forty years ago.

“Stupid” is simply one of the four Republican archetypes that the media likes to present to the public: the “stupid” person who appeals to the masses because they’re all “stupid” as well (see: Ronald Reagan), the cold and blue-blooded “Elitist” Republican who is out-of-touch with average Americans (see George HW Bush), the “Evil” Republican whose intelligence is too hard to deny (see Newt Gingrich and Richard Nixon), and the “good” Republican who spends most of his time making trouble for his own party (see John McCain, Lowell Weicker, Bob Packwood, Mark Hatfield, etc.). So let’s forget about all of that for now.

The question before us is this: by failing to recognize the differentiation in human talents, are we doing severe damage to our society? It seems obvious to me that the answer to that question is a resounding, “yes.”

Now some will claim that intelligence is not an entirely genetic phenomenon and that it is societal in origin. This is true, to some extend. The full development of intelligence depends upon the socialization and education of a child. But the natural capacity of an individual in this area is, in all probability, fixed and innate. A computer with a 2.4 Gigahertz processor and one with a 120 Megahertz Pentium can probably run Windows 3.1 with equal efficiency- however only the 2.4 Gigahertz can run the newest games and software.

Simply put, we cannot expect people with greatly differential abilities to perform the same tasks. So why do we try? By cramming all of our twelve year-olds into the same Seventh Grade class, we’re either going to be moving too fast for the slow students or too fast for the bright ones. Why would we do that? Merely to hold true to some egalitarian piety?