#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
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The following is a conversation with Vivek Ramaswami about the future of conservatism in America. He has written many books on this topic, including his latest called Truths, the Future of America First. He ran for president this year in the Republican primary and is considered by many to represent the future of the Republican party. Before all that, he was a successful biotech entrepreneur and investor with a degree in biology from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. As always, when the topic is politics, I will continue talking to people on both the left and the right with empathy, curiosity
actually, this is one of my criticisms of the modern Republican Party and direction of the conservative movement is that we've gotten so good at describing what we're against. There's a list of things that we could rail against, wokism, transgender ideology, climate ideology, COVIDism, COVID policies, the radical Biden agenda, the radical Harris agenda. The list goes on. But, actually, what's missing in the conservative movement right now is what we actually stand for. What is our vision for the future of the country? And I saw that as a deficit at the time I started my presidential campaign.
Yeah. We'll talk about each of those issues. Immigration, the growing bureaucracy of government, religion is a really interesting topic, something you've spoken about a lot. But you've also had a lot of really tense debates. So, you're a perfect person to ask to steal me on the other side. Yeah. So let me ask you about progressivism. Can you steal me on the case for progressivism and left wing ideas?
Yeah. So, look, I think the strongest case particularly for left wing ideas in the United States, so in the American context, is that the country has been imperfect in living up to its ideals. So even though our founding fathers preached the importance of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and freedom, they didn't practice those values in terms of many of our founding fathers being slave owners, inequalities with respect to women and other disempowered groups, such that they say that that created a power structure in this country that continues to last to this day. The vestiges of wha
what's your criticism of that? So
my concern with it is even if that's well motivated, I think that it recreates many of the same problems that they were setting out to solve. I'll give you a really tangible example of that in the present right now. I may be alone amongst prominent conservatives who would say something like this right now, but I think it's true, so I'm gonna say it. I'm actually even in the last year, last year and a half, seeing actually a rise in anti black and anti minority racism in this country, which is a little curious. Right when over the last 10 years, we got as close to Martin Luther King's promised
You had a pretty intense debate with Mark Cuban. Great conversation. I think it's on your podcast, actually. Yes. Yeah. It was great. It was great. Okay. Well, speaking of good guys, he he messaged me all the time with with beautifully eloquent criticism. I appreciate that, Mark. What was, what was one of the more convincing things he said to you? You're mostly focused on kind of DEI. So
so let's just take a step back and understand because people use these acronyms, and then they start saying it out of muscle memory and stop asking what it actually means. Like, DEI refers to capital d, diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is a philosophy adopted by institutions, principally in the private sector, companies, nonprofits, and universities to say that the
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