Americans aren’t communists, and we are not China, so why is a prominent American conservative floating a communist idea?
Conservative and Trump appointee Vivek Ramaswamy stepped on a MAGA landmine Thursday when he posted a long thread on X addressing the problems he sees with American culture and immigration. The discourse has been fascinating, if a bit fiery, but ultimately a great sign that the right is more vibrant and willing to debate crucial issues compared to people on the left.
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…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 26, 2024
I’m not here to address America’s broken skilled immigration system, nor argue that the country does not need any more nerdification (which is true). I want to draw your attention to a specific part of Ramaswamy’s argument, which is that if America does not embrace his vision of culture — with its focus on technology, STEM, and engineering — we will “have our asses handed to us by China.” At this point in the thread, he seemed to briefly embrace a very communist ideal, which is that our function as citizens, why we wake up every morning and go to work, is to serve the state. (RELATED: America Doesn’t Need More Nerds And Foreigners To Start Winning Again)
“‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent,” Ramaswamy said. “And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”
Ramaswamy appears to be suggesting that our goal as Americans, our goal in our work and careers, is to make sure the United States remains competitive and has a higher GDP than China. That our goal is to serve the state’s interests, not our own. The state comes before all else — not family, not religion, not your community.
No American, whether they are a highly skilled engineer working in tech or the owner of a bagel shop, wakes up every day and thinks to themselves, “Today, I am helping the United States federal government pursue its geopolitical interests.” They are quite the opposite. They are motivated to provide for their family, their loved ones, to improve their homes, neighborhoods and towns on a much smaller, incremental scale.
The mere suggestion that if we do not change our culture into a highly-optimized, tech-centered culture because China will be more powerful than the United States, will ring hollow with ordinary Americans who are not statists. And it carries more than a whiff of communism.
To conduct your life with the state’s interest in mind is to snuff out what makes you human — and what makes America so great. We are not drones for the state, as communists would like us to be. The state is not a deity. We are creative, innovative, and generous people who create, innovate, and give to others not because the state demands us to, but because we are humans.
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