Book Review: Nation of Victims by Vivek Ramaswamy
America wins only when we eschew victimhood and identity politics, restore merit, and return to excellence.
Victimhood is America’s currency of the day. There are fake victims everywhere---from Jussie Smollett to Naomi Osaka to Rachel Dolezal to Michelle Obama to Stacey Abrams. Victimhood is the fastest path to garner sympathy, and to use that sympathy to greater money and influence in America today. There's a difference between victimhood and hardship. Everyone encounters hardship. But one chooses to be a victim.
It didn't use to be this way. America used to be a nation of underdogs. The founding fathers rose up in an insurgency against the British empire, declared independence, and have given us the greatest country in the history of the world. But as we've become prosperous, we've become a nation of incumbents. Prosperity affords us the opportunity to focus on imaginary bigotry and wokeness, instead of what really matters---preserving this Republic, and making a better life for our children and grandchildren. Underdogs strive for excellence. Victims blame and scapegoat others. Incumbency breeds victimhood. Victimhood breeds mediocrity, incompetence, reduction of the economic pie, and national decline. Victimhood is a tool used by elites to avoid accountability. Virtue is replaced by virtue-signaling. All empires eventually fall. Some are defeated by foreign enemies; some are debased by domestic greed and power.
In the Nation of Victims, Vivek Ramaswamy diagnoses the problem, spares neither liberals nor conservatives, and gives us a roadmap back to excellence. At the core of our problem today is a hunger for meaning and purpose. As religion, patriotism, and local groups have withered, wokeness and identity politics have risen up to replace them. Our society is corrupted by Orwellian use of language used by the ruling class to gaslight us. Conformity is "diversity." Inequality is "equity." Racism is "anti-racism." Exclusion is "inclusion." These linguistic lies are used to disempower individuals and empower woke elites and totalitarians.
America's victimhood tale doesn't begin last year, ten years ago, or even 100 years ago. It begins during the Civil War when Robert E. Lee blamed James Longstreet for the South losing the Civil War. After the Civil War, as Republicans tried to reconstruct the Union, pro-slavery Democrats and their sympathizers on the Supreme Court watered down the Reconstruction Amendments that protected citizens' rights and paved the way for judicial activism that curtailed civil rights and economic regulations.
In the 1938 case United States vs. Caroline Products, the Supreme Court---finally willing to end the legacy of slavery and ban discrimination---laid out the conditions groups had to meet for the Court to scrutinize laws discriminating against such groups: (1) the group had to be politically powerless---they couldn't redress their grievances through the normal political process; (2) the group experienced discrimination historically; and (3) membership in the group had to be based on immutable characteristics.
Sixteen years later, in 1954, the Court applied these conditions to correctly conclude that segregation was unconstitutional in the case Brown vs Board of Education. Since Brown, however, the Caroline Products conditions have been abused by activists to manufacture oppressed groups in a race to the bottom. This creates a society in which every group imaginable seeks to be the bigger victim---win the Oppression Olympics---to redress whatever grievance they might have. Viewing yourself as a victim is a destructive way to live and hurts the very same groups that activists say they want to empower. And the benefits are then applied to supposedly oppressor groups via "suspect classification." Competing in Oppression Olympics isn't how free people with agency should live. We should lift people up---not bring them down.
A better way to fight injustice and discrimination is to decouple group identity from the perceived grievance, and ask: Is there a connection between group identity and the policy in dispute? If not, then the only plausible explanation for the policy is prejudice. For example, there's no connection between race and public education. There's no justification for segregation other than racism. Hence, "separate but equal" education was discriminatory. This new approach to equal protection jurisprudence focuses on merit, individual agency, and social mobility; and doesn't make groups compete to be bigger victims. Victimhood helps nobody in the end. Tools you use to create victims today will be used by your enemies tomorrow. There's a better way to ensure a more perfect Union. We must replace grievance with greatness.
"The mindset of victimhood make you look for an enemy to punish; the mindset of an underdog makes you look for which parts of the world you can change."
Victimhood is leading us to national suicide. Ramaswamy makes the case that we need to change course and revive merit and excellence. We need a new Manhattan Project for semiconductor fabrication, educate engineers instead of activists, invest in economic growth and retraining focusing on STEM fields and innovation, restore our manufacturing base, and rebuild our military in order to compete with China. Make the military great again instead of woke. Focus on winning wars and fighting for freedom---not faux "white rage." Being strategic and smart with our power---know when to engage militarily and when not to.
The key to overcoming victimhood and returning to excellence is to stop thinking in terms of hierarchies and power structures---such misguided attitude simply inverts the axis of oppression leading to more division and injustice. We need to think in terms of Kant's universalization: if it’s wrong when I am the oppressed, then it is wrong when I am the oppressor. Otherwise we end up in a broken country or even in civil war. Eschew identity politics---people exploiting their identities to obtain more power and wealth---and think in terms of a shared humanity.
Prosperity leads to entitlement and laziness. Laziness breeds victimhood as people make excuses for their failures and cover up their sloth with a veneer of fighting injustice. In turn, this creates a culture of "bread and circuses"---power-hungry politicians debase the currency to bribe the populace with government largesse (bread) while abdicating responsibility with distractions like identity politics; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and division (circuses). Such culture leads to inequality and national decline as the populace, pitted against each other, fights over how to distribute the economic pie---instead of growing it. The more victimhood one bestows upon themselves the greater share of the economic pie they demand.
Our national wealth has also made us more risk averse as people have more to lose (as the old saying goes, "if you ain't got nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose"). This creates a culture of fear and silencing. Good people don't speak up for fear of retribution and material loss. Consequently, good people's silence empowers ideologues who accrue more power and wealth by pushing bad and divisive policies and ideas that go unchallenged and become mainstays of society. Ultimately, this ideology-centered culture of bread and circuses destroys the country as society based on merit, excellence, rationality, citizenship, patriotism, and virtue is replaced by a society based on nepotism, cronyism, corruption, spectacle, consumerism, instant gratification, and virtue-signaling.
The downward spiral of victimhood leads nowhere good---to a country where identity groups subjugate each other depending on who's in power. Victimhood breeds more victimhood as groups try to stick it to their so-called oppressors. That's not equality. That's not freedom. That's tyranny masquerading as liberation. That's a hierarchy that destroys the country. To move forward and restore the American dream we need to forgive, eschew grievances and identity politics, and re-focus on excellence. Often, prejudice isn't something innate to people---it’s born out of ignorance, fear, revenge, and the inability to see others' humanity. Sometimes we say bigoted things we don't mean because we're in a bad mood, have a bad day, angry, or tired. We must break the force field of grievance to foster a culture of equality and excellence. And return to a classically liberal society where everybody is allowed to fail, make mistakes, learn and grow from mistakes, and get a second chance. Wokeness is an antithesis of freedom.
"When you free yourself from the illusion that you're a mere victim, you simultaneously free yourself from seeing others as mere oppressors. They will see your excellence and want the same thing for themselves: when you show others your true self, you help them become theirs."
To eschew victimhood we need to return to merit and excellence, and instill the ideas of citizenship---as opposed to consumerism---duty, and service in young people. But there's a paradox of meritocracy: it increases wealth inequality through inheritance, and eventually leads to its own demise as the developed aristocracy works hard to undermine equality of opportunity and preserve their wealth. Contrary to progressive solutions that tax wealth, Ramaswamy proposes a high inheritance tax as a hedge against the formation of aristocracy that sabotages merit and equality of opportunity.
If you build your wealth through your own hard work, your children shouldn't be spoiled with something they didn't earn. Unlike wealth taxes, inheritance taxes don't reduce economic growth and incentives for hard work. Everybody benefits in the end: the country grows richer and more prosperous with more people contributing to economic growth and job creation; your children become better citizens and people---don't become lazy by simply feeding off the fruits of your hard work and not helping the country that gave them so much freedom and opportunity. Inheritance taxes prevent aristocracies and preserve the meritocratic system that benefits all---rich and poor alike.
In sum, Ramaswamy has given us a playbook to escape the downward spiral of victimhood, and to restore the country focused on merit, excellence, citizenship, forgiveness, classical liberal ideals, virtue, duty, and service. This will go a long way toward securing the blessings of liberty and prosperity for ourselves and our posterity, and keeping America as the greatest nation on the face of the earth.