Belmont Club: Is Vivek Ramaswamy’s Unpleasant Advice What We Need to Hear?

Vivek Ramaswamy broke the first law of effective public relations. In what we can visit his blood, sweat, and tears post, he likely alienates the government. No matter what Hollywood says, the billionaire investor had one clear message for the audience on X: We didn’t get away by taking it easy.

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born &amp, first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit ( a lazy &amp, wrong explanation ). A crucial part of it comes down to the c-word: society. If we’re really severe about fixing the problem, we must confront the TRUTH: Hard questions demand difficult solutions.

For far too long ( at least since the 1990s and likely longer ) has American culture venerated mediocrity over excellence. That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from” Boy Meets World”, or Zach &amp, Slater over Screech in” Saved by the Bell”, or’ Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in” Family Matters”, will not produce the best engineers.

( Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 1990s who actively restricted how much of their children could watch those TV shows because they promoted mediocrity, leading to wildly successful STEM careers for their children. )

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of” Friends”. More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less” chillin”. More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall”.

The majority of typical American parents skeptically perceive” those kinds of parents.” More typical American kids scorn such” those kinds of kids” in comparison. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve….

” Normalcy” does not lead to exceptionalism. Which one is it, exactly? Hollywood’s “feel good” or Desmond Doss ‘ indomitable” Please Lord, let me get one more”? For most people, going to the mall is undoubtedly better. However, something about our earliest experiences encourages us to be wary of easy counsel. ” Bilbo laughed.’ Gandalf, I have never known you give me pleasant advice before,’ he said. ‘ I wonder if the advice you gave was good because of how well it was received. Is success contingent on persistence and unrelenting effort? &nbsp,

Many a 19th-century British “public school” ( also known as a private school ) boy would have been aware of Vivek Ramaswamy’s exhortations. Every pulpit and rostrum would have preached it. To tweet it would have been commonplace. One of the refutes white privilege is that it “normalizes” a culture of achievement and expansion, in contrast to the more communitarian, more savage human culture of the global South. Since the end of World War II, progressives have been attempting to purge the West of this urge because white supremacy is rooted in an unhealthy obsession with success.

” To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” is what the baddies did. This unwholesome desire is the root of the progressive cultural agenda as a whole. And they are on the verge of doing it. The original Olympic motto is made up of three Latin words: Citius, Altius, Fortius. These words mean Faster, Higher, Stronger. The International Olympic Committee’s Session approved a change” that recognizes the unifying power of sport and the significance of solidarity” on July 20, 2021. The new Olympic motto now reads” Faster, Higher, Stronger–Together”.

The problem, as Vivek points out, is that China won’t get with the decolonizing program, or rather, they have exempted themselves from it. ” Be brutally honest”, he writes.” ‘ Normalcy ‘ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China”. China has already given its ass to Europe.

Share of Global GDP in 2007: 1 ) EU: 25.2 % 2 ) USA: 24.7 % 3 ) China 6.1 % &nbsp,

Share of Global GDP in 2024: 1 ) USA: 26.3 % 2 ) EU: 17.3 % 3 ) China: 16.9 %

Only two months ago, Emmanuel Macron warned that the EU was only 2 to 3 years from irrelevance. ” The EU could die, we are on a verge of a very important moment… Our former model is over. We are overregulating and underinvesting. In the two to three years to come, if we follow our classical agenda, we will be out of the market” .&nbsp,

But can they change? Only if Europe is so humiliated by China that they, like Mao and Sun Yat Sen in the last century, spend the rest of their lives relearning Citius, Altius, Fortius. Everyone can hang out at the mall until then, though everything will be produced in China.

Source credit