Vivek Ramaswamy ignited a bit of a firestorm today on X.
Let’s start with the obvious: on November 5th we voted to secure the border and deport the illegals. Completely sealed: no more illegal entries. Total deportation: if you’re in illegally, you have to go back. But what we didn’t vote for was the termination of immigration. And so, Ramaswamy:
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
I think most of the anger over this is twofold:
- nobody likes to be told that their country sucks. To say that our culture doesn’t promote excellence is to say that our culture is substandard.
- the American people, on the whole, are not keen to import workers – not even good workers. This is on the basic truth that American jobs should by and large be filled by American workers.
Ramaswamy does not go on to say that we should just keep importing workers – I think some people are misunderstanding what he said, and some are likely deliberately misunderstanding it because, remember!, there are lots of people who’s whole existence is based on disliking Trump…and this includes a lot of people on the Right. The rest of Ramaswamy’s post is a call to arms, as it were: that we can make excellence our focus as part of that whole Make America Great Again thing.
We do have to acknowledge our flaws. If we can’t, then we’re doomed. Do you know why South Africa is heading towards a Third World collapse? Because the majority doesn’t want to be told that they suck and if they want to get ahead they’re going to have to ask the Boers for instruction. They’d rather wallow in memories of Apartheid as the excuse for all ills with confiscating whitey’s farms as the cure. The only way a person, an organization or a country gets its act together is by acknowledging what’s wrong and then setting about fixing it.
Ramaswamy correctly states that we have been praising the second rate, the unimportant…and I’ll add that we also laud the downright self-destructive. Think about the number of movies and shows that hold up some psycho as the hero. We can’t deny that Anthony Hopkins played the psycho killer excellently in Silence of the Lambs…but the coda of the movie with him heading off to eat the pretentious psychiatrist is hideous. So, too, the end of No Country for Old Men with the bad guy getting away…possibly after murdering a completely innocent woman. Yes, of course, the bad guys sometimes get away with it…but sanity requires that in our story telling they don’t. Lambs should have ended with Starling arresting or killing Lecter…just as Bell should have killed Chigurh to finish up Old Men. This is not to take away the skill or artistry of those involved in those productions…but The Wild Bunch ended up with the bad guys all dead and quite uselessly over nothing. That was the fitting end to violent criminals…and the sort of story that is useful for society.
We need to start holding up the good, the true and the beautiful – popular culture is never a social mirror…it is what you’re aspiring to. And if we’re aspiring to bad guys winning and psychos being cooler than sane people, then we’re going to have some problems. Like, for instance, all the problems we have right now.
In order to Make America Great Again our first order of business is to fix our problems. Deporting all the illegals won’t resolve the fact that about 70 million Americans used illegal drugs last year. That is 20 percent of us. One in five! This does not include those who booze it up too much nor does it really cover marijuana as that is legal in a lot of places these days. We still must deport all the illegals…but the American drug addicts are a huge problem. So, too, things like people having sex before marriage, getting divorced, adultery…with our pop culture pushing these pathologies as positively healthy. That has to stop. No, you can’t say “first amendment!” and call it a day…do you want broken families and drug addicts or do you want sober people in healthy families? You can’t have it both ways – you’re going to get what you insist upon and if you don’t insist upon sobriety you’ll get drunks.
We can’t leave people lying around in the streets. We must do something with them. We must demand that people perform or punish them. Do you realize how tough this is going to be? Kicking out Jose and not letting Patel have a visa isn’t going to Make America Great Again. Its going to take a bit more than that. Do you have the iron in your veins to get it done?
So, yes, I firmly believe that American jobs should be filled by Americans…and that companies should pay wages that Americans want, not what some guy who doesn’t want to live next to an open sewer in Mumbai is willing to take. But this does mean we need Americans who are fit for the task. That means sober, stable, dedicated people who know that life isn’t a free ride. Hindu immigrants to America are doing very well – overall they make more money than white Americans. And its because they are stable, sober and work their butts off. Do you want that? Well, guess what…

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