The Ohio man with my name is making me look bad, and I’m starting to take it just a little bit personally.

It apparently isn’t a 2020s Christmas until Vivek Ramaswamy pours kerosene over his political future in the form of an essay where any valid kernel of a point he makes within it is buried beneath a heap of unnecessary scorn for large swaths of Americans.  But apparently this is perfectly okay because, by disagreeing with him, they aren’t American, or at least they aren’t any more American than a stranger who happens to check the right box on her way in.

Vivek’s latest op/ed in the New York Times describes “two [incompatible] competing visions” of American identity, one based on heritage and the other based on “ideals.”  To be an American, Vivek insists that you must believe the right things: rule of law, freedom of conscience and expression, colorblind meritocracy, the Constitution, and the Dream.  He doesn’t get more specific than that, but if you subscribe to those things and enter legally, then you’re “every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant.”

Yes, he actually says this.

Far be it from me to denounce someone just for being provocative.  If you’re here, it’s because at some point in time, I provoked you.  I regret nothing. But Vivek’s transgressions went far beyond the mere start to an awkward conversation.  In fact, his essay attempts to close off and cancel the conversation entirely.  If you fail to view American identity as he does, you’re just a blood-and-soil “white-centric” Groyper and a nuisance in his social media feeds.  If you object to his definition of American identity, you’re just an anti-Semitic creature of woke grievance.  So shut up.

But more offensive than that is the false dichotomy Vivek ironically undercuts without even realizing it.  If “a Mayflower descendant” is his exemplar of someone who is automatically American, then by implication, heritage does play some role in shaping and determining American identity.  Probably no one on the Mayflower itself knew what a “colorblind meritocracy” is, but that didn’t stop Vivek from bestowing “default American” status to their descendants.  And, of course, it is innately absurd to conclude, as Vivek does, that if you tried to substitute every Mayflower descendant with a third-world foreigner who said yes to liking the “colorblind meritocracy,” that you’d end up with the same country.

Vivek’s false dichotomy compels him to embrace a vision of nationhood that is akin to a gaming subreddit or an enthusiast Facebook community page where anyone can connect from anywhere as long as they like the same thing, and the only requirement to participating as an equal is that you promise not to be racist.  It’s the “you can milk anything with nipples” conceptualization of an American.  And apparently, if you disagree, then you’re in the Nick Fuentes camp.

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Beyond this absurdity, Vivek misses the crucial point.  The reason the American Right is having these debates right now is because there exists (for good reason) a profound dissatisfaction with what has passed for assimilation recently.  Far too many people America generously admitted into its borders did not “buy in” or otherwise do their part to conform to American culture, values, and society.  They may have been productive and they may have brought good food with them, but they were expected to integrate, to “melt into the pot,” to be loyal, grateful, and to incorporate themselves into the common destiny that Americans share as members of one nation.  Many have not done this.  Worse, many have not even tried.  Even worse, many outright scoff at the idea that they even should.  The Right sees this as a problem, and that is why, as rancorous and unpleasant as discourse often is, the debate going on is a profoundly healthy one.

Nowhere does Vivek address this.  Then again, the essay he wrote the year before made it clear that Vivek doesn’t really believe very much in assimilation if you’re coming from a nerdy, head-down academically overachieving superior Asian culture.  Why lower yourself to being like Zack and Slater when you can be Screech?

In that essay, just as here, there were fair points and good ideas Vivek had, all of which fell on unwilling ears because no one wants to be told that their country isn’t theirs when it obviously is.  And the rebuttal is quite simple: America is not a nation founded strictly on a creed.  It’s a nation founded WITH a creed.  That is not the same thing. Not even close.

Ironically, Vivek trivializes the gravity of the “creed” by defining American identity exclusively with it.  Let’s assume he’s right about what the tenets of that creed are.  As if it’s so easy to simply “subscribe” to free religious exercise, free speech, the Constitution, and merit.  The largest political party in the United States of America (the Democratic Party) believes in absolutely none of these.  These ideals are not mere boxes you can check or answers to get right on a little civics exam.  No one is born programmed to understand them.  It takes time to internalize and absorb them, to appreciate where they came from, to treasure and value them, and to develop affinity for and loyalty to those ideals.

Moreover, if “ideals” really are all there is to a nation, then what do we say about one that fails to live up to them?  Do the people of that nation suddenly forfeit their right to it?  No one seriously believes that Vivek would say yes to that.  But then what about if that country makes alliances with other countries that do not share the same creed?  Britain, Canada, and Australia are all allies, even though all three have adopted Orwellian censorship regimes and permission structures for brutality by their unassimilated foreigners.  If the “creed” is at the center of American identity, then no such alliance can truly exist, at least not in peacetime.

None of this is feasible in the real world.  American identity is a beautiful product of both heritage and ideals.  And America itself is an exceptional nation because of its exceptional ideals and because of its exceptional people.  Take away the creed entirely, and America is still a home to millions of people who belong to it.  Its ideals are a product of the experience and the struggle that multiple generations of Englishmen and Europeans went through in the 1700s to convert a trideca of British colonies into a single independent nation; of the laws, customs, and traditions that informed how those men chartered America’s structure of government.

Could a foreigner become “every bit as American as a descendant of the Mayflower”?  Of course.  But the bonds of citizenship take work to forge.  And they take even more work to maintain.  It takes more than just a superficial nod of the head in recognition of some of the ideals to do so.  Heritage is not and will never be the sole determining characteristic of an American, for the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.  By necessity, however, that requires making a covenant with Americans.  You have to respect them and respect their ancestors.  You have to break bread with them, mingle with them, befriend them, work with them, learn with them, talk with them, pray with them, celebrate with them, mourn with them, and, if necessary, fight and die with them.  Their interests must become your interests, their enemies must become your enemies, and their destiny must become your destiny.

In other words, to be an American and to adopt the American identity as your own, you have to love Americans as people – as your people, not just people who live near you.  And you have to understand, appreciate, and respect the values and the traditions from the core of the founding.  It’s not one or the other; it’s both, and it must be deeply embedded.  This does not happen overnight, and it doesn’t mean that you give up every single aspect of who and what you were before.  Nor does it mean you must agree with everything that goes on.  No one does that.  It just means, even more simply, that you join the team and commit to the mission.

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Vivek’s creedal-nation bromides don’t just offend me as an American.  They offend me as someone who shares his name.

Nearly three years ago, at the start of his campaign for President, I happened to meet Vivek.  Before being cut off by his team, I playfully grilled him for a bit on the question of why he, an Ohio man, had not visited East Palestine.  In early 2023, he was virtually unknown and his campaign was more of a book tour for Woke, Inc.  He did not have good answers, and I earnestly suggested to him that by not going there, he was missing an opportunity to connect the abstract critiques of woke mind viruses in his book to the real issues that affect real people in his own state, which also happened to border the most important swing state in the country.

The last question I was able to ask him was: “if you’re not here for that, then what’s the theme and the aim of your campaign?”  I have never been so dissatisfied with the generic Republican talking points I was given by him in response: “I want less government and more freedom.”  Thanks; never heard that one before.

At the time, I thought Vivek’s blinders were on a bit too tight such that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees on the issue.  But now, after three years and two of these ridiculous essays, full of false choices, false dichotomies, and sanctimony, it’s clear that Vivek’s problem runs deeper.  He doesn’t really respect Americans, and people have figured this out now.  He thinks he does, but he doesn’t.  His understanding of American values and ideals is superficial, which is why he cannot discuss them as anything other than generic abstractions.  It’s also why his technocratic ideas and solutions, many of which are good and ought to be implemented, do not amount to anything more than a band-aid on the real problem, which continues to elude him.  No one, not even those who support him, thinks his gubernatorial bid is anything other than opportunistic.  Too bad too because his opponent is much worse than he is.

Vivek is clearly not the only person who needs to reflect on the insipid idea that is America as a “creedal-nation.”  But he’s the person I most wish would do so because – damn it – he’s making me look bad.

– Vivek