Vivek Ramaswamy Says America Must Return to Meritocracy

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate and tech entrepreneur, recently gave a speech at the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit, in which he discussed a “listlessness in American society” caused by the abandonment of meritocratic principles. According to Ramaswamy, this is responsible for the rise in popularity of “woke” ideas, particularly among young people in the West.

In his speech, Ramaswamy highlighted the linguistic root of the word “America,” which comes from the Gothic word “Amalric,” meaning “master of work.” He believes that this idea of hard work as a means to achieve success is inextricably linked to American culture, but that society has lost touch with this principle. He specifically calls out Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” initiative in the 1960s, which led to a dramatic expansion of the nation’s welfare state and veered American society away from its merit-based roots.

Politics and Culture are Interconnected

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Ramaswamy argued that the decline of meritocracy has also led to the emergence of radical new ideologies, such as those of gender fluidity and critical race theory. To him, meritocracy is the system that administers social good, and the absence of it creates a void that these alternative frameworks can fill. He believes that returning to meritocracy would have a positive impact on contemporary culture across various sectors.

Ramaswamy suggests that returning to meritocracy would enable the answer to the question of what it means to be an American to be enshrined, thereby diluting alternative ideologies to irrelevance. He also espouses Ayn Rand’s philosophy of the interconnectivity of political movements and cultural trends, which he discovered in college.