2009 will probably go down as the Year of Stupid. Everywhere you look you see birthers, deathers, deniers, tea fetishists, and semi-literate amateur pundits screaming and frothing over their unsupported, repeatedly debunked line of argument. They are wrong. Dead wrong. Distractingly, even dangerously wrong. And since they will not, or more likely cannot, understand this fact they go on screaming and frothing in a fruitless quest for validation. They'll disrupt town hall meetings, Congressional addresses, and children's birthday parties to remind you, just in case you allowed yourself to forget for even a moment, of just how painfully stupid they really are.

Clearly, stupidity has always been with us. It would probably be accurate to say that stupidity is our natural state as human animals and that we separate ourselves from less capable species only through our ability to move past it. But in this age of cable news and Internet anonymity we have lost that tenuous connection between ignorance and shame.

People no longer feel embarrassed when they betray their own tragic misapprehension of current events during a diner party conversation or go out of their way to imply that the President secretly subscribes to a militant form of Islam. Even when they accidentally discover the truth, they often play it off as a product of the unfair fact-based bias in the media.

In that fertile ground, stupidity is bound to take root and flourish. Unless we do something soon to check its growth, this kudzu-like organism of stupid will likely swallow us all.

The problem, it seems, is that we have indulged our stupidest citizens either because we wish to avoid the hassle and conflict or for pure entertainment value. We have treated them like indulged children, so it should not surprise us when they eventually behave like them.

We even pretend to take some of them seriously because they can influence other stupid people into buying books they can neither read well nor fully understand, but we've come to a point when we must forget being nice and consider the future of our country and humanity as a whole. We're going to have to start slapping people again.

The practice has fallen out of favor over the last half century or so due to changing tastes and a general dislike for touching other people in the course of an argument. It seems we would rather use remote-controlled airplanes dropping bombs to make our points for us.

The slap is remarkably effective. A cold, hard smack across the face stops an unproductive conversation cold and gives the slapee a chance to reevaluate their mistaken point of view. Just watch any black and white movie and you'll clearly see what I mean. Whether someone's acting hysterical or just plain stupid, a well-timed slap works wonderfully well for both.

Example 1: "Captain! Captain, we're all going to die!" *slap* "OK. I'll get the fire extinguisher."

Example 2: "Why won't the President show us his real birth certificate?" *slap* "OK."

Example 3: "So, that email thing says that global warming is officially a hoax-" *slap*

There is an art to it, an art that has sadly died away since its hayday of a few centuries ago. It's all in the wrist. Done properly, a slap is not a violent act. One must never slap out of anger. Only slap out of pity.

Slapping people takes nerve, of course, and many of you would probably rather not slap anyone. If you need convincing of just how necessary this is, look around you. Things have gotten so bad that a former VP candidate can align herself with the most ridiculous and oft-debunked conspiracy theories in recent political memory and, though the media has raised a collective eyebrow over the story, no one has made her understand the shame she ought to feel over such a painfully stupid act.

Put simply, Sarah Palin needs to be slapped. Vigorously. Slap that greasy, clueless smirk off her stupid camera-ready face. Then move right on to slapping the chalk-white crap out of former VP Dick Cheney. And keep on slapping until he stops mumbling about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. If there is any hope for them or their kind, she will thank you eventually.

This brings us to Alexis de Tocqueville. Very, very stupid people sometimes like to quote him just to prove they can pronounce his name and the vague understanding that some of the lines from his book "Democracy in America" sound similar to words used on the ribbon magnets on their cars and trucks. What they don't seem to understand is that the book is mostly a warning about the dangers of direct democracy in the hands of an uneducated, passive, and pridefully ignorant electorate.

And as a Frenchman, it's only natural to assume that he loved to slap people.