Vivek Ramaswamy: DEI Is a 'Cancer'

so we have this victimhood metastasis where everyone wants to think of themselves as a victim we have to recognize there is no winner in America's oppression Olympics today I sit down with Vic ramaswami author of The 2021 bestselling book woking inside corporate America's social justice scam affirmative action is the systemic racism that's still here in America today and I'm sorry to say it will then create the new kind of anti-black racism that we had spent so many decades moving on from today we dive into his new book nation of victims which looks at America's culture of grievance on both the left and the right and how Americans have lost a sense of purpose and identity this he says has paved the way for politicization of business and the rise of woke capitalism I think a culture committed to Excellence demands inequality of results demands inequity of results I'll say the quiet part out loud this is American thought leaders and I'm Yan Kell mikras Swami such a pleasure to have you back on American thought leaders it's good to be back thanks for having me on well Vic uh I finally managed to finish your book uh nation of victims you know I had you on about a month ago just talking a little bit about it absolutely fascinating piece um you're looking at kind of the other side of woke in which uh is your argue is even the more important side and we're going to get into that in a moment I want to get your opinion on something uh right now there's this uh you know investor letter that uh Elliot management one of the larger hedge funds in the world sent around is basically talking about how it global economy is on a path to hyperinflation it might read to almost societal collapse this is something in an actual letter this is not theoretical this is not sci-fi so what do you make of that actually right about this extensively nation of victims as well and so it's deeply related to even some of these themes of excess followed by victimhood but in a nutshell I think we are in a period of inflation we might be entering hyperinflation very soon I think the Federal Reserve has been late to raise rates but at at a very high level what's going on right now is more scary than the last cycle of hyperinflation in the United States because you now have to raise interest rates against the backdrop of not Ronald Reagan's deregulatory policies not Ronald Reagan's tax cuts that otherwise stimulate the economy to balance out the effects of rising interest rates to curb inflation but now you're doing it against the backdrop of Joe Biden's economic policies which are not particularly favorable to private Commerce or business his war on fossil fuels which in turn is contributing to an energy crisis a supply demand imbalance for Global energy that in turn contributes to inflation which then in turn requires a greater raising of interest rates which cools down the economy against the backdrop of those you know I would say unfavorable commercially unfavorable regulatory policies that you have a double whammy and I think that's what's unique right now relative to the 1970s to early 1980s in the early areas of Paul vulker raising rates under Ronald Reagan it was at least a Yin for Yang and now instead you have actually a one-w punch and so I tend to agree that we're I'm very cautious heading into where we're going as an economy for the next next several years I I think we're in for hardship I think we have an era of hardship that's waiting for us we have been skiing on artificial snow for the last decade and a half with free money riging like Mana from Heaven on high with the Federal Reserve printing it and by the way central banks around the world doing the same thing at some point when that artificial snow machine turns off as we're starting to see in the United States we realize that we forgot how to actually ski on the real thing and so that's the in some ways the bad news the good news is in the long run I'm an optimist because I actually think that could be an I actually think that could be an opportunity for us where we build the muscle memory that we have lost after a decade and a half of losing it that allows us to understand how we actually create things through actual Ingenuity actual productivity actual a notion we've forgotten in our economy hard work and I think that that's in some ways been covered up by the excesses the excesses of monetary policy in particular over the last decade and a half and by excesses of monetary policy you basically mean just printing insane amounts of money that's correct that's correct yep exactly I think it's true in the United States it's true in much of the modern West it's true in most democratic societies around the world following the 2008 financial crisis we had chronically Easy Money chronic low interest rates that I think have you know in some ways you could look at the bright side of it fostered risk-taking Behavior that's resulted in innovation in sectors ranging from Tech to biotech but I think the the net cultural effect of it is that it has actually created a time of artificial ease and I think that we're going to pay for a lot of those sins sins of excess in the couple of years ahead of us and so whether that's going to be a financial Armageddon or not that's not necessarily you know my view I don't think that this is you know look let's just put it this way very few people have been consistently good at predicting Financial Armageddon and many times more has Financial Armageddon been predicted than it has materialized uh and so that's you know all of the Forgotten predictions of people who predicted Financial armag get in when it didn't play out we don't remember those so I'm not saying that that's exactly what we're in for like a 2008 style crisis or worse but I do think we're in for an era of some economic hardship but I think that could actually end up being good for our culture if we learn from it so actually you argue this in uh in both woke Inc your your first book and I think in the second book as well that this situation that you just described actually allows for a situation where people focus in the corporate world on things that are very different than the creation of actual value that's right that's right and so the case I made in Wok Kink was was that the politicization of business is bad both for business and for our body politic it's bad for business because every business has a unique and worthy purpose usually that's true because if you don't have a worthy purpose people aren't going to pay you for the service that you provide they're not going to pay you more than it costs you to provide it so almost by definition there's a presumption in favor of most businesses having a worthy purpose when they serve their customers but when we impose these top- down political and social agendas on those businesses they're less good at making WI that people can buy from them which in turn creates less valuable businesses which in turn creates a less prosperous society that holds everyone back so that was my critique but also Milton Friedman's critique right that part wasn't original the part that if I may say so myself was was you know was a different spin a different a different Pro moment of progress in the conversation that I aimed to add in Wok K was that it wasn't just a threat to capitalism it was also a threat to democracy and the reason why is that in a Democratic Society citizens are supposed to decide how we settle our political differences through free speech and open debate in the Public Square where everyone's voice and vote counts equally and when we delegate the authority to make those political decisions or those social decisions whether and how to fight climate change or systemic racism or whatever what we're really saying is that those guys get to make make those decisions behind closed doors business Elites and corporate boardrooms Etc according to a $1 one vote system not a one person one vote system but a$1 one vote system which I think sucks the air the lifeblood out of a democracy which is one where every Citizens Voice and vote ought to count equally on the kinds of questions the political normative social questions that a citizenry ought to decide rather than a was that was where I was with woke Inc but but the thing I you know that compelled me to write that second book that that it sounds like you just finished reading is it does really take two to tango right and so woking I take a look at the top down phenomenon the merger between government and private Enterprise together doing what neither one could do on its own I even traced the ways in which government is using private companies to do through the back door what government couldn't do through the front door under the Constitution things like big Tech censorship things like the climate agenda that major financial institutions are pushing through their banking arms through their Asset Management arms but at the same time the question I ask in the second book is what is it about our culture right now and our national psyche that still creates an energ an entire generation that's buying up this nonsense right what about the demand side of this so in some ways Wok in was about the supply side the supply of the BS and and the and the second B Nation of victims is all about the demand side is it about a culture that actually eats up these these U you know I would say one-sided narratives and and in a way why is it that Corporate America is dancing to that tune so they go together well no and this is very interesting let's stick to woking just for one more moment um you know this the supply side so to speak um it's not obvious it's not obvious and this was very powerful frankly in your book is going to making this case but it's not obvious that Corporate America with their fiduciary responsibility ities to their shareholders would take this path right oh it's far from obvious yeah it's counterintuitive yeah completely counterintuitive and so is it and you of course make the case that it's it has to do with these very kind of loose monetary policies that's part of it that's part give me the whole picture yeah I mean the whole picture takes the the whole book to read but I can give you give you a couple under underappreciated elements of it all right one of the stories I do Trace in woke Inc is the story that goes back to the 2008 financial crisis you know we're here in New York City actually was working in New York City starting the fall of 2007 on the eve of the ' 08 crisis I was working at a hedge fund here in New York so I had a front row seat to what happened then what happened is in the aftermath of the ' 08 crisis you had large government bailouts to the big Banks here in New York and on Wall Street I was an opponent of those bailouts as a side note I remain an opponent of those bailouts I think that was a bad mistake I think we continue to pay for those sins to this day in ways that are not just economic but cultural I'll come back to that but anyway in the aftermath of the ' 08 crisis what happened was that you know the guys on Wall Street went from being the Heroes that you were supposed to emulate if you were a young guy coming out of business school or whatever to becoming the bad guys and Occupy Wall Street was literally occupying Wall Street it was it was on wall Street's doorstep and they you know the capitalist class in this country they were on their back heels and so what they recognized was look Occupy Wall Street that is a tough pill to swallow they want to take our money redistribute it to poor people to help poor people reform and reorder the system of who controls the keys to power over the market that's a tough pill to swallow but it turns out that there was a birth of a new wing of the left right around the same time that had a slightly different theory of the case than the Occupy Wall Street left what what the new Left said was that actually it wasn't about economics but it was about racism misogyny and and bigotry and climate change and all that stuff so that's actually what presented the opportunity for big business in this country to bail itself out culturally it wasn't just the government bailouts they bailed themselves out culturally a second time over where they said that look here's what we're going to do we will Embrace those demands of the new left we will talk about systemic racism all you want as long as you don't talk about systemic Financial Risk all right we will Muse about diversity and inclusion we'll appoint some token minorities to your boards we will pontificate about the racially disperate impact of climate change after you fly in a private jet to Davos we will do all of those things but we don't do it for free we effectively expect that that new wing of the left look the other way when it comes to leaving our corporate power structure intact and that is how you get it was kind of the the joke of the last book was you got a bunch of big Banks got in bed with a bunch of woke Millennials together they bir wo capitalism and they use that to put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption all right that was the trade they made it worked so well for the capitalist class here downtown New York City that Silicon Valley then got in the ACT what they realized was that okay work for the Wall Street guys the threat to our Monopoly power right now if we're sitting in Silicon Valley comes from the left even the Obama left right they wanted to break it up big Tech was cool on the left before it was cool on the right and so what they realized was look we can defang that threat to our power structure if we agree to lend some of that Monopoly power to Advance your substantive ends we'll sendor speech you don't want to see online we'll take down misinformation as you define it but again we don't do it for free we effectively expect that the new Democratic party look the other way when it comes to leaving our Monopoly power intact and so that's how the game was played the rest of corporate America starts copying the ACT you know Coca-Cola Gets to make statements about new voting laws in Georgia systemically racist voting laws like requiring voter IDs Muse about how do you teach their employee base to be less white that was the word they used how to be less white well actually getting to get off the hook on their own product's impact on the Nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity including by the way in the black community that they profess to care so much about so you know Nike whatever condemn slavery 250 years ago in the United States yes don't say a peep about actual slavery in China today in the shangz Jang Province or using labor abroad to generate $250 sneakers that you s of black kids in the inner city who can't afford to buy books for school this is great it works out for all parties but it was this cynical arranged marriage it was the reason it was counterintuitive is I don't think either side really really had too much respect for the other it was a marriage in which each partner had secret scorn for its bed partner it was it's closer to Mutual prostitution but it worked for as long as each side got something out of the trade and that was the story of the birth of this you know illegitimate child the woke industrial complex that I argued was far more powerful than either big government or big business because it was this chimeric almost monstrous hybrid of the two and that was you know in many ways crushing and the will of the everyday Citizen and diluting the voice of the of the everyday American in the economy as well so many people of this ideology for example started to populate the HR Departments of these big corporations and you know started hiring people that were similarly inclined because they knew the right code words and so forth the way I look at it is it is when wokeness met capitalism that it got supercharged with the full force of green pieces of paper behind it you know before that time wokeness in America was basically there was a fringe philosophy in the halls of some Academy somewhere at some liberal arts college it was supposed to be a challenge to the system and if you ask the question about when did this go from being about being a challenge to the system to becoming the new system it's when wokeness met capitalism that it was supercharged with the potency of Market power that effectively made it ubiquitous but and this has led I mean not just this and this is the case you make in the in the new book nation of victims that you know we're kind of in the midst of a national identity crisis and it's not just among the left that's right and so this is where I get to the bridge to the second part of what I was talking about which is it takes two to tango on the flip side this corporate trick wouldn't have worked if there weren't a consumer base and an employee base that effectively demanded that same behavior of the companies and and I don't think I treated that issue enough in woke in because it's a separate and complicated question yes there's this cynical top down institutional marriage between government and big business but what about what about the millennial generation my generation and younger in fact I would say increasingly most people even in you know under the age of 40 in the United States demanding this you know sort of virtue singaling behavior and even even encouraging it through their consumer buying behaviors and their employment work patterns so that's a cultural question less to do with corporate America and big government but more to do with our culture as we know it and I think my net diagnosis and this bled from the end of woke Inc into even the beginning of nation of victims is that we live in this moment in our country where our entire generation Yan we are hungry for a cause okay we are so hungry for purpose and meaning and identity at a point in our National History where the kinds of things that used to fill that void for purpose right things like patriotism and hard work think that comes up again and Family Faith whatever it might be national identity the kinds of things that used to fill that void for purpose they've slowly receded if not disappeared in Modern Life and that leaves a black hole of identity in its wake and when you have a vacuum that runs that deep that is when poison begins to fill the void that is what allows wokeism to find its home at the heart of that American soul that is what allows scientism as distinct from science right the scientism the secular different secular religions one at a time praying on that Soul what is it it's the vacuum that actually creates the attraction to that poison and so one of the things I I looked in the mirror after I wrote woke Kink I mean look I went on a national tour across the country and I was before this I was a biotech CEO but this is when I became much more vocal on these issues pointing out what I quickly came to find was an infinite list of hypocrisies of businesses of universities of government's relationship with business of this new woke cancer infiltrating nearly every major institution the hypocrisies were endless it was it was almost too easy by the end but I look myself in the mirror and asked myself okay how are we actually solving the problem yet there's some value sure in shining a spotlight on the problem and educating people on it to the extent you know how but we're not really moving the needle unless we fill that black hole that vacuum for purpose with something more Rich something more meaningful that dilutes the poison to irrelevance and I think that's the project I took up in this second book is okay we've got this void of purpose where from here and if we don't fill that void for purpose with affirmative values like Excellence I mean that's the case I make in the book a vision of American identity centered on the Unapologetic pursuit of Excellence individual self-actualization you know the the destiny of realizing your journey as an individual that's part of what it means to live the American dream it's part of what it means to be American but if we don't fill the void with something more affirming that's when you get victimhood that fills the void instead and I think the case I make in the first half of the book is that victimhood has become our new national identity the call to action I make in the second half of the book is we need to fill that identity vacuum with something else based on the shared pursuit of Excellence as part of what it means to be American but the path from getting from A to B is a complicated one that runs through some uncomfortable terrain so I want to touch on something that I thought was really really interesting in a nation of victims and it's related to exactly what you're talking about now now you you point out that you know I believe that some surveys were done and so forth that it's like the people that are objecting to inequality something very reasonable for people to object to but it's actually the unearned inequality that that is the thing that that people have the big issue with they don't mind so much if they feel like someone has done the hard work or has demonstrated the Excellence to to to you know get higher status or something like that so tell me so there's a Dimensions to this yeah I mean one is one is from woke in and and the other is is what you're talking about with respect to nation of victims I think that one of the things that we lose in the debate about material inequality is that the first thing we can do is just lower the stakes in the debate if the green pieces of paper that you and I have or someone else has or doesn't have are really just green pieces of paper that buy things right okay in the scheme of things if you have you know a nicer car than I do or I have a nicer watch than you do all right well I probably want the nicer watch or you probably want the nicer car but in the scheme of things that's one category that matters if it's just that okay you've got more green piece of paper in your bank account maybe your tie is more brand named than mine but who cares they're just things it's just materialist you know superficial stuff in the context of what The Human Experience really is in the context of what it means to be a co-equal member of a society we can be co-equal citizens in a society even if your your tie is is is a more of a name brand than mine I think part of the problem with this new trend of so-called stakeholder capitalism or ESG informed capitalism or whatever what that does is says no it's not just the fact that you have more green piece of paper than I do and it's not even the fact that you have a you know a luxury car where I only have a a mid-tier sedan or whatever it is also the fact that your voice counts more than my voice in our body politic because you're say on how we fight climate change if you have a seat in a corporate boardroom is more impactful than my seat at The Ballot Box because that's all I get that your view on how we should fight systemic racism or racial Equity or racial Injustice or whatever through implementing quota systems in who gets promoted at the company where I work imposes that agenda on me that political agenda on me where all I have for my voice is the voice of The Ballot Box because I don't have the same dollars that you do so so I think this is is the this is the first step in this debate this is terrain all covered in woke Inc is that we skipped to the inequality debate talking about inequality in dollars without first asking ourselves whether we've already just made a mistake by even over fetishizing the green pieces of paper by allowing them to be too important in terms of what they even represented so so we're already in a in a smaller lower temperature zone of this discussion but let's let's let's get to the bottom of it even further look I think that people would I think have a lot less of a begrudging attitude towards successful capitalists if they knew and had Faith In A system that that person was rewarded for the value that they uniquely and individually created rather than many who happen to get that head start for the for the mere Act of being born right and I think this is a conversation I tease in the book a little bit forget about whether you favor high taxes or low taxes I I I'm more in the low tax Camp right I don't I don't trust the government to manage money as much as I do through the you know decentralized allocation of of resources but put that to one side that's not the that's not the debate I'm touching here let's say you want High tax you want low taxes whichever it is do you prefer to get more of those tax dollars into the system through taxing income as you earn it which actually makes it harder for someone who's starting from the ground floor to work their way up or do you want to take a closer look at how one gen generation transfers wealth to the Next Generation if you had to pick between the two right let's say the government only needs a tiny amount of Revenue to run let's say the government needs a ton of Revenue to run I I prefer the tiny model but whatever it is I still think that there's a conversation to be had about waiting it much more heavily towards picking it up on intergenerational wealth transfers then on picking it up in income that you tax every year along the way and I think more importantly I think that it would have the effect of making good on the promise of true equality of opportunity while being well completely shedding our insecurities about our Collective insecurities about the inequality of results I think a culture committed to Excellence demands inequality of results demands inequity of results I'll say the quiet part out loud because I think we need to not everyone is going to reach the Finish Line at the same time not even not even everyone is going to get to the same Finish Line whether that's on the basketball court whether that is in the classroom whether it's in the system of free market capitalism we're not going to have a system where everyone wins and loses equally if we have a true culture of Excellence they don't go together but against the backdrop of at least starting on or around the same line and also against the backdrop of saying that even if somebody does get to that destination it's just a question of things it's just a question of material diff material materialistic differences but not normative moral differences citizen self-worth differences in that sense we're still all equal I think that's the way to to sort of we weave weave our way through what is the otherwise um you know I would say thorny Thicket of the debates we've had for over 100 years in this country about inequality thinking about this idea of unearned inequality is just we have so many examples especially over the last few years of you know I I'll I'll give one example I was just looking at a thread written by vene Prasad you know professor of epidemiology UCSF looking at at all the ways in which the CDC for example which is you know the provides the guide Public Health guidance for the nation these are supposed to be you know the elitist of the elite Public Health officials has utterly failed right it's actually quite the list to read right um and you think to yourself you might think to yourself my goodness you know these people are in charge they're essentially setting the tone for everything that we have to do because everyone says we got to follow these these guidelines but there they're not demonstrating excellence and that's unfair and I'm angry I agree with you there's this sort of narrative of victim but there's also this narrative you know coming from this idea of kind of anger at the fact that really many really incompetent people are in charge and you're forced to live by their edicts or something like this what do you think yeah I mean I think that um it's a broader discussion than just the unearned the uneed earned it uh sort of rewards I do think that there's a separate issue relating to just mistrust and and earned mistrust of institutional leaders in our country right so I think that that that the Builds on the theme that we were just having about about unearned status right I was talking about in the context of inheritance but more broadly in terms of people who Ascend and occupy positions of authority in institutions I think are increasingly uh put in those positions in ways that are decoupled with this idea of Merit I mean Merit is is is I Define in the book a system of allocating rewards exclusively according to principles of Excellence Excellence is in turn an internal system for self-actualization of purpose of any institution and so you know from institutional purpose follows excellence and from Excellence follows Merit as a system of Distributing those Rewards increasingly the people who are in charge of those institutions are behaving not only in ways that dilute the purpose of those institutions but are also put in those positions in ways that betray the principles of Merit and I think that that's a different sense in which I think the public correctly I think senses that there's a there's an unearned status an unearned reward that's not even Financial in nature but that goes with a certain um I would say reward of status that was unearned I I think does the diversity Equity inclusion uh you know cancer in this country play a role in creating that unearned status of course it does I think many people are put in those positions for reasons that have little to do with their job qualifications but it's not just that it was some sort of you know racial or sexual minority or whatever that wasn't as competitive as the person who otherwise would have gotten that job in a colorblind system it's that the idea that you can do it for that reason then opens up the possibility that well if we weren't going to do it for Meritt we could do it for Dei reasons but you know if we've thrown out Meritt it could be somebody else's self-interested reason too right could be okay well you know I'll just put someone there because U they're going to be less of a threat to me right if I'm a if I'm a co-equal or if I'm on the board you know I'll put someone there who isn't going to who isn't going to threaten my power structure in the organization there could be other UNM meritocratic reasons for doing the same thing too so it's a double wh me not only are you getting unqualified people from certain underrepresented groups or whatever that itself undermines the entire justification for merit at all and there's all other kinds of self-interested corrupting forces that then fill that void too so so I do think that's a big part of what's swn the seeds for this public mistrust in the idea of Merit because you know they're right doesn't really exist in the way you know many institutions practice their behaviors well at this point I have to ask you you know uh the Supreme Court is actually looking at affirmative action oh yeah as we speak you know what do you think should happen based on your thinking here I think the Supreme Court should strike down affirmative action finally put a nail in that coffin okay this is a mistake that was made decades ago let's recognize the mistake for what it was and at least move on to a better way of rectifying alleged racial inequities in outcomes there are racial inequities in outcomes but what accounts for that I think starts at a very young age in the families and in broken Public Schools starting as early as kindergarten or preschool go up up stream and fix those problems instead of using this cosmetic Band-Aid on the back end of the process because you know what if affirmative action worked then you wouldn't need the same racial minority groups who needed it to get into boarding school who then need it to get into college who are then the exact same racial minority groups that then needed to get into into graduate school who were then the exact same racial minority groups who needed to get into the workforce if it was working you wouldn't need to double count or quintuple count at every step of the cast and I will tell you was I was at Harvard for college I was at E Law School you I see it Firs hand it's the same groups the same people that require the same affirmative action programs every time through that means it's not working it's a pretty good sign that it's not working it's also a disservice to even the qualified members of those minority groups who do get those positions because of Merit because no one can tell the difference at the end of the day they're going to reward people of certain races well even if somebody scored really highly or or was excellent in their performance they're going to be judged in an unfair Way by their by their non-favored peers and so you know in the first instance it is this form of anti-white and anti-asian racism one of the things I talk about nation of victims was actually a study the last rigorous study that was conducted on this as well I think it was by this guy Espen shade who found that when you look at for like Elite colleges I think looked at the top 10 Elite colleges or 10 of the elite colleges there was an over 400 point gap between SAT scores that an average Asian applicant would have to score versus the average black applicant let's keep in mind this is a 1600 scale test where I believe you can't score less than a 400 literally 400 is the lowest score you can get and the difference between the Asians who apply to those colleges and the black people who apply to those colleges is an over 400 Point Delta now nobody talks about affirmative action for the NBA or the NFL but if you were to apply this the N NBR NFL it would be the equivalent of you know asking someone who's black to make a half court shot but someone who's Asian gets a stair step right up to the hoop to go do a slam dunk it's it's something that would ruin basketball nobody would want to watch basketball or watch football if it was informed by principles of affirmative action we shouldn't think it's anything different in science or engineering classrooms either it's an assault on Merit it's an assault on excellence and I've said this before I said in the book I'll say it again an assault on Merit and assault on Excellence is an assault on the American Soul part of the essence of what it means to be American is to be able to pursue excellence unapologetically and affirmative action I think is the I think can pretty confidently say I think it is the single greatest form of institutionalized racism in the United States today anti-white anti-asian racism but which then creates a backlash wave of new anti-black racism that we otherwise would not have had but for the grievance that affirmative action creates amongst the people who are penalized by it so that's what I say you ever think uh you know the creation of the grievance is intentional uh I think there's a lot that happens behind closed doors that you know is explained by cynical motivations I just don't think this is the one case that fits that description I don't think the creation of the grievance was intent I think the creation of the white savior complex that is indulged by creating a system that gives back to black people who supposedly couldn't hack it on their own that's a an Indulgence of sort of a white savior complex but I don't think that they intended to Foster grievance I think they intended to Foster gratitude so I think instead what happened is they created new grievances in other members of of the disfavored races in this game we're talking about whites and Asians that then created new forms of racial animus towards the people who were perceived to have taken their spots and then you get on an airplane and you see a black pilot and you say that well I know that they just eliminated testing requirements because of a a mandate to achieve racial Equity I think many people will they won't say it out loud but they will think twice when they see the black pilot in the cockpit wondering if they're in the hands of a slightly less qualified pilot than they what than they otherwise would have been in a world without affirmative action and that is no one's fault other than the people who created the system that allowed one to even possibly make that inference that is what I call true systemic racism that is the affirmative action is the systemic racism that's still here in America today and I'm sorry to say it will then create the new kind of races and black racism that we had spent so many decades moving on from I want to shift gears a little bit um you know essentially you make the argument that it's not just the left that is basically thinking of themselves as victims it's also conservatives very much so you have a whole chapter dedicated to this right and then you kind of get end up in this arms race of victimhood so I want I want to get you to talk a little bit about that you know you also issue a challenge and the challenge is you know we have to lay down our arms right but then there's a lot of people that might not think it's been a fair game fair battle so tell me yeah so so the chapter is entitled conservative victimhood and this is one of my Reflections and one of my concerns is that I worry that this culture War we're in ends not with a bang but with a whimper where both sides are infected with the same cancer yet still continuing to fight each other not knowing that they're actually members of the same victimhood tribe and one of the points I make in this chapter is that there are legitimate reasons for conservative victimhood we could spend hours talking about them right some of them I even lay out in woke ink by the way others of them I didn't land Wok in but are more economic in nature you think about let's take the policy to decision that we made in this country for the dollar to be the reserve currency of the world I think that is a good thing for the United States by the way for the dollar to be the reserve currency of the world it gives us control of the Global Financial system it it's what allows us to freeze the terrorists assets on demand it is what lowers borrowing costs for the United States but if the dollar is the reserve currency of the world that means that there's a little bit of artificial extra demand for the dollar above and beyond what would have existed under market conditions where the dollar was not the reserve currency what does does that mean that's an artificial buying pressure that pushes up the average price of the dollars we have a strong dollar but a strong dollar is actually bad for exporters because that means their goods are incrementally more expensive artificially more expensive on the global stage so it's great for importers in the United States but it's bad for exporters bad for manufacturers well they're left holding the bag it's a great policy that grows the size of the pie for everyone in the United States overall but leaves one group of people you know people in today's Rust Belt holding the bag you go to next policy think about student loan forgiveness that's recent in the news well again somebody who borrowed money to go buy a truck or whatever it is and build a career as a trucker in that industrial Rust Belt they didn't get their loans forgiven for buying that truck even though somebody who went to you know bin Mah college or whatever it might be did for for being a Humanities major I'm not saying that you know we can question the merits of that policy I personally think that policy was a boneheaded policy but put that to one side that's the same group of people then left holding the bag then you look at where's military enrollment coming from well you know it turns out that we do need a military to defend this country that we don't get to live the free lives that you and I live without actually having people willing to defend it well again same group of people holding the bag then you look at the intellectual property system well the intellectual property system is effectively a government created subsidy to knowledge-based Industries and no subsidy is free it effectively comes at the cost to manufacturing Industries the same manufacturing Industries and people who worked in it who were penalized by the dollar as Reserve currency policy framework that created the strong dollar so anyway I I I could go on and on and and in you know in a rigorous as rigorous a way as as one could want hopefully paint the case for conservative victimhood trumpian victimhood Justified reasons for victimhood that resulted in the election of trump in 2016 as the expression of that frustration got it but you know what else we could do go to the left leaning version of this conversation you know we're here in New York City I'm sure there a lot of them happening there'll be the same Saab story told by somebody else about the black victimhood narratives about redlining in this country how literally there were laws written that prevented black people from living in certain neighborhoods take the War on Drugs you know the the again it's trite because everyone's talked about this stuff at nauseum but you know there is a difference in arrest rates for crack cocaine versus versus non-rack cocaine okay so you know one is more disproportionate and prevalent in the black community well they'll say you blame us for having unstable family structure where you're the guys who took the father figures and put them in jail the black victimhood epidemic is now creating a new epidemic of white victimhood culture in our country second generation Asian kids are now growing up in this country trying to describe themselves as persons of color inventing hardships for themselves that they didn't actually go through but their parents or their grandparents actually did in coming to this country and so so we have this this victimhood metastasis where everyone wants to think of themselves as a victim and at some point I think that we have to recognize there is no winner in America's oppression Olympics there is no gold medalist if there's a gold medalist maybe it's China China may be the gold medalist of America's victim Hood Olympics our assault on Merit over here but America as a nation is who loses in the end and so at some point we're going to have to get past the grievance tug-of War saying that you know what you have a grievance you think you were oppressed well guess what I was oppressed by even more right that's the white victimhood complex in response to Black victim at some point we got to stop guys we're done that's the part where I say lay down arms okay everyone might have the real valid reasons for their claims on victimhood but start to forget about your claim on victimhood and reclaim your claim on Excellence that is what we need to revive in our cultural R we're not going to have a nation certainly not a competitive one left at the end of it we'll just have a hollowed out husk of of America as a geographic space but you know what are we a bunch of higher mammals roaming around a common Geographic space we're not were human beings free agents who came together to found a nation built on principles of Excellence we're going to have to return to Reviving that National Spirit if we're to have a chance of passing the torch on to that next Generation which is why you know I even bother to write this book each side needs to forgive the other right that and this is what you argue um the response to that I can kind of hear it in my ear because I see it almost every day like for example there was this recent um article in the Atlantic you know calling for pandemic amnesty for everyone that did you know poor things or vilified others during the pandemic and so forth and people are saying well okay but you know there needs to be accountability for these terrible behaviors sure maybe even we can do forgiveness but what about accountability forgiveness and accountability are two separate conversations and one is not a substitute for the other what I actually worry about is we might be in the worst of all worlds where we wallow in grievance without accountability so so in a certain sense I worry that we're we have we're in that worst case scenario where everyone experiences grievance but we're not actually doing the things to hold the people who ER to be accountable I argue for the exact opposite of that where we should have forgiving attitudes to one another as F fellow co-equal citizens but that doesn't mean if you if you commit a crime you don't do your time that doesn't mean that if you fail as a leader that you aren't put out of a job so that somebody else is put in that spot in return and I think it's a very different balance we need to strike not the double whammy combo of both grievance without accountability but a forgiving view of human nature of co-equal citizens as co-equal partners in building a nation while still recognizing the fact that if you were put in a leadership position you failed you deserve to be held accountable if you broke a law you know we will rehabilitate you through our criminal justice system and through our through our you know Rehabilitation system but that doesn't mean that you're not held accountable for bashing in a storefront in the summer of 2020 forgiveness doesn't mean that you you don't bear some level of of punishment and and go through you know a a rectification system but I think we can do both of those things at once not only can we do both of those things at once I think they're actually even synchronous with one another I think part of respecting someone's humanity is to recognize that they deserve a level of being held accountable for failing to act in the way that we would expect them to comport themselves I mean this is the stuff of of literature Russian literature you know Crime and Punishment okay this is this is the essence of actually respecting someone's Humanity you know vivec I could speak with you for hours um any final thoughts as we finish look I think the path from victimhood to Excellence runs through a lot of complicated terrain and that's that's probably the most important part of the book I think I think the path from victim of Excellence runs through forgiveness I think it runs through hardship but you know I also think that there are good reasons to be optimistic okay there's a lot of analogies that people draw today between the rise and fall of the American experiment and the rise and fall of Rome that's why I spent a couple chapters in this book detailing the history of Rome I had to brush off some of my Roman history actually I had studied Latin in seventh and eth grade that was most of the Roman history I learned came from those years in middle school and and one of the things I reminded myself of is you know what there was no one rise and fall of Rome it turns out there were many Rises and there were many Falls and you know what there are many Rises and many Falls of the American experiment too there have been and I think that yes we may be at a low point we may be at a nater but I don't think we're done with this one yet I think we have many generations yet left to go and if we can take the hardship that I think we're going to encounter in the next couple of years but remind ourselves that hardship is not the same thing as victimhood okay hardship can be what reminds us who we are both as individuals and as a people then we will be stronger for it as individuals and as a nation on the other side of it and I'm actually optimistic that that's exactly what's going to happen it's just that we're going through a rough patch in getting there um my concern is I'm like you I'm very bullish on the US I think the US can handle a lot and people can figure things out but what if we get so weak that this you know nefarious power that Chinese Communist Party can really take advantage and kind of you know take over that is one of the risks we need to guard against which is why I have been as vocal as I possibly can on this issue I think it is the single greatest threat to the future of America to the future of the free western civilization free countries and Democratic Freedom around the world as we know it and you know what I think that they're deeply aware of some of the Kinks in our armor I talk about this extensively and Wok Kink about the relationship between stakeholder capitalism and ESG applying asymmetric standards in the west that they don't apply in China that's actually in service of China's own agenda but you know what there's kinks in their armor too and and as long as we educate ourselves to become more aware of it I think we might be able to come out on the winning side of this because history teaches us that it is the ego the hubris of dictators and autocrats that eventually proves to be their Achilles heel I have no reason to believe that it will not be the same for xianping he's just taken over that third term we just need to prepare ourselves to be as excellent as we possibly can you know Rome fought that Punic War with Carthage over the small island of Sicily I asked the question whether Taiwan might be the Sicily of our time but the question is are we Rome or are we Carthage and that's a question for America to answer through decisions we make in our culture through decisions we make in our economy even decisions we make in our military as I point out in the book we're in the middle of this divest to invest program I think a you I think an ill-thought ill-conceived military policy where we're decommissioning ships precisely during the window that China might make its move on Taiwan I think this is a complete rethink from instit ranging from government to military to our economy to our culture but I think if we can Revive Our path back to Excellence in each of them then my bed is still on America leading that way not only for for you and I but for our children and for the free world as we know it it's going to take real work and it's a big part of why I wrote these books and it's a big part of why I hope we can educate our fellow citizens to do what needs to be done to take that hardship that we're about to go through that we're already going through right now and to be strengthened by it rather than to be defined by it well Viva cras Swami it's such a pleasure to have you on again thank you Yan it's a pleasure [Music]