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Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence
The New York Times bestselling author of Woke Inc. makes the case that the essence of true American identity is to pursue excellence unapologetically and reject victimhood culture.
Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake.
But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again.
Leaders have called Ramaswamy “the most compelling conservative voice in the country” and “one of the towering intellects in America,” and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America’s national decline.
Following the success of his instant bestseller Woke Inc., Ramaswamy explains in his new book that we’re a nation of victims now. It’s one of the few things we still have left in common—across black victims, white victims, liberal victims, and conservative victims. Victims of each other, and ultimately, of ourselves.
This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself—and hopefully its reincarnation.
Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake.
But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again.
Leaders have called Ramaswamy “the most compelling conservative voice in the country” and “one of the towering intellects in America,” and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America’s national decline.
Following the success of his instant bestseller Woke Inc., Ramaswamy explains in his new book that we’re a nation of victims now. It’s one of the few things we still have left in common—across black victims, white victims, liberal victims, and conservative victims. Victims of each other, and ultimately, of ourselves.
This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself—and hopefully its reincarnation.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published September 13, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
July 16, 2022
Reading Vivek Rama Swamy’s Nation Of Victims is a bit like taking an upper level course on Modern Society, tackling everything from philosophy to sociology to economics on the way. He poses the question of whether we are a dying nation akin to the fall of the Roman Empire or whether we can experience a rebirth. A large part of the demise of America, he argues, rests in the rise of victimhood over meritocracy.
Ramaswamy begins with the underdog story, the Horatio Alger story of lifting one’s self up by one’s bootstraps. Being an underdog, he explains, is not about how much you win, but about how hard you are willing to work for it. Underdogs always see themselves that way. They are always the outsiders, not the incumbents. Compare that he says to a victim’s story where a victim demands of those around them, not of themselves. The problem for us as a nation now, he explains, is that we are a wealthy nation and easy times create weak men such that we are more worried about what words we use rather than on having enough to eat.
The next part of the book delves into history, the story of the Civil War and General Longstreet. But from history, we then leap into the philosophy of Hume and Kant.
As to history, Ramaswamy is a bit uncomfortable with the business of tearing down statues. History, he reminds us, is filled with nuanced men and women who struggled to do the right thing even if they often failed. Dividing the nation into black and white, virtuous victims and evil oppressors, without shades of grey, we will blind ourselves to our past.
After discussing history and philosophy, Ramaswamy turns to a discussion of constitutional jurisprudence, decrying the failure of the High Court to invigorate the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which could have illuminated rights and duties of citizens. The Court instead went down the long rabbit hole of substantive due process and dividing people into groups deserving different levels of protection.
Next, the book tackles Critical Race Theory, explaining its intellectual history and critiquing the main expository texts of that doctrine. Personal anecdotes illuminate the explanations.
After tracing victimhood through history, philosophy, judicial decisions, and intellectual theory, Ramaswamy argues that victimhood has been seized on by both the Left and The Right, using examples of two politicians who refused to concede election losses, Stacey Abrams and Donald Trump.
Victimhood and viewing your own nation as being in the downswing is not becoming. The next chapter is devoted to the fall of Empire and a history lesson in Rome and Carthage.
Eventually we come full circle to his prescription that we view America not as a dying nation, but one searching for itself and waiting to be reborn. Just shed these arguments and grievances of victimhood we are told
Ramaswamy begins with the underdog story, the Horatio Alger story of lifting one’s self up by one’s bootstraps. Being an underdog, he explains, is not about how much you win, but about how hard you are willing to work for it. Underdogs always see themselves that way. They are always the outsiders, not the incumbents. Compare that he says to a victim’s story where a victim demands of those around them, not of themselves. The problem for us as a nation now, he explains, is that we are a wealthy nation and easy times create weak men such that we are more worried about what words we use rather than on having enough to eat.
The next part of the book delves into history, the story of the Civil War and General Longstreet. But from history, we then leap into the philosophy of Hume and Kant.
As to history, Ramaswamy is a bit uncomfortable with the business of tearing down statues. History, he reminds us, is filled with nuanced men and women who struggled to do the right thing even if they often failed. Dividing the nation into black and white, virtuous victims and evil oppressors, without shades of grey, we will blind ourselves to our past.
After discussing history and philosophy, Ramaswamy turns to a discussion of constitutional jurisprudence, decrying the failure of the High Court to invigorate the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which could have illuminated rights and duties of citizens. The Court instead went down the long rabbit hole of substantive due process and dividing people into groups deserving different levels of protection.
Next, the book tackles Critical Race Theory, explaining its intellectual history and critiquing the main expository texts of that doctrine. Personal anecdotes illuminate the explanations.
After tracing victimhood through history, philosophy, judicial decisions, and intellectual theory, Ramaswamy argues that victimhood has been seized on by both the Left and The Right, using examples of two politicians who refused to concede election losses, Stacey Abrams and Donald Trump.
Victimhood and viewing your own nation as being in the downswing is not becoming. The next chapter is devoted to the fall of Empire and a history lesson in Rome and Carthage.
Eventually we come full circle to his prescription that we view America not as a dying nation, but one searching for itself and waiting to be reborn. Just shed these arguments and grievances of victimhood we are told
March 14, 2023
Although this book has plenty of insightful analysis of the victimhood mentality currently driving American politics and corroding our society, I am skeptical of the recommended solutions to what I agree is a real crisis and national threat, solutions or proposals which strike me as social engineering based on the author's favorite philosophers and economists. I do not want government to reinvent society; I want it to be effective, responsive, and as small and unobtrusive as is practical. Ramaswamy calls himself a conservative; I would characterize him as an overreaching neo-con. Probably worth a read since he's running for president, but suit yourself.
July 17, 2022
Stacey Abrams == Donald Trump. And The Way Back Is To Ignore Both. Ok, so the title here was a bit intentionally inflammatory - but Ramaswamy *does* essentially make this very point late in the book, pointing to how both Abrams and Trump see themselves as victims of election fraud rather than candidates who lost elections because more voters legitimately sided with their opponents. But to get there, and to get from there to how we can truly come back, Ramaswamy dives through American history, legal theory, and even his Hindu religion to show how both progressives and conservatives have largely adopted a victimhood mentality. Interestingly, he never once cites Ayn Rand's examinations of this same idea in Atlas Shrugged. Overall an interesting book worthy of consideration, and with a fairly normal bibliography at about 21% of the overall text here. Very much recommended.
November 19, 2023
I ended up checking out both of Mr. Ramaswamy’s books at once and read the second one first. Oh, well.
This book examines the culture of victimhood we now have in the U.S. Americans have always loved a good underdog story. Victimhood is similar, except it doesn’t require any work. Underdogs always work to overcome injustice and poverty and oppression. Victims just have to whine and sit there and hope people will come and coddle them like children. It’s not a healthy mindset.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate grievances. But victimhood is now used as a power play, with everyone scrambling to get to the top of the ladder of oppression — because only villains would dare challenge a victim.
There’s a lot of philosophizing in the book, from the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to the philosophies of equality and fairness.
The writing is very engaging with many interesting points. While I don’t completely agree everything he says, I feel like he is someone whom you could have a lively debate with and still come away friends.
I had quite a few highlights, added below.
Language: Occasional strong language
Sexual Content: None
Violence/Gore: Brief mentions of violence in the news
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
=============================================
The racism I experience doesn’t define me. My actions do that.
“Stop Asian Hate,” progressives chanted in 2020 following allegations that the coronavirus may have leaked from a Chinese lab. Yet every high-achieving Asian American kid in this country remembers the day they learned that their race would be an obstacle when applying to elite colleges, remember the way they learned the American promise of equality is in some ways still only a promise. Because colleges like Harvard can’t legally admit that they’re rejecting high-scoring Asian applicants because of racial quota systems designed to help black and Hispanic students, they’re forced to say Asians fall short on “personality scores.” How progressive.
The right way to make further progress as a country isn’t to eradicate every last remnant of racism at all costs, constructing every-more-elaborate linguistic purification rituals to gradually atrophy to irrelevance. By contrast, the antiracist movement in America instead throws kerosene on those final burning embers of racism—inflaming the very problem that it supposedly addresses. Antiracism often speaks racism into existence by demanding that we view and treat people differently on the basis of their skin color.
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going is going to ride a Land Rover, but my great-grandson is going to have to ride a camel again. Hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” (attributed to Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum)
Underdog stories and victimhood tales are like the light and dark sides of the Force: they have something in common, but the dark side is the easier path to power, even if it leaves you worse off in the end.
It’s kind of funny and sad that our antiracist society gives serious consideration to the argument that elite colleges aren’t discriminating against Asians because we’re just cowardly, unlikeable, unkind worker drones who aren’t leaders. It’s common knowledge that this the exact same argument that Harvard made when it discriminated against Jews almost a century ago. … It called that “the Jewish problem.”
What liberals miss in their ruthless pursuit of social justice is that elevating some races above others based on a hierarchy of victimhood inevitably creates new victims.
When an officer kills a black suspect, no matter what the facts of the case are, the default presumption these days is that the officer is guilty until proven innocent, especially if they’re white—and then if the criminal justice system does find them innocent, that’s simply taken as evidence that the system itself is racist.
There are two main flaws with the idea that the war on drugs and mass incarceration were created by white backlash to the civil rights movement: first, violent crime skyrocketed in the years before tough-on-crime laws, and second, black people were often the ones pushing for them.
Black support for being tough on crime isn’t just a thing of the past; it’s still present today. It is a bitter irony that the white liberals loudly pushing the “defund the police” movement on the basis of the New Jim Crow victimhood narrative are drowning out black communities who want to keep police present [sic] constant or even increase it.
As the victimhood narrative becomes common wisdom, it replaces the voices of black people themselves. Eventually, well-educated white people end up making policy decisions on behalf of black ones, so confident in what they want that they see no need to listen to them. Even worse, on the occasions when black people do speak out against he victimhood narrative, politicians, media, and activists will be tempted to say that they don’t really know what they want, that their desires have been corrupted by white supremacy. This is how dark-skinned people who resist progressive views on criminal justice end up getting called Uncle Toms.
Being a sore loser is a danger to democracy no matter which party it comes from. It chills me to see the Democratic Party moving in the same direction. In part in response to the victimhood narrative of a stolen election, Republicans in many states passed a variety of voter reform laws, so far at least thirty-three bills in nineteen states. In truth, many of these reforms strike me as minor tweaks that won’t affect elections much one way or the other; some of them seem to be symbolic gestures that legislators are “doing something.”
___But President Biden and other top Democrats call them Jim Crow 2.0. I guess that’s because “the new Jim Crow” was already taken by one of their other victimhood narratives. … Andrew E Busch sums it up by saying, “Jim Crow 1.0 entailed widespread murder and violent intimidation, onerous taxes, rigged literacy tests, and a flat prohibition on blacks voting in the primary elections of the dominant party, leading to results such as Mississippi’s 7% voter-turnout rate for African Americans. ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ mean(while), requires that voters show proper identification, vote in the correct precinct, and request their absentee ballot every two years instead of every four. Someday, historians will marvel that anyone ever took seriously the argument that these two regimes bore any relation to one another.”
One problem with viewing the world through the lens of victimhood is that it forces you to look for an oppressor—it’s easier and more viscerally satisfying to blame people than policies or trends. The mindset of victimhood makes you look for an enemy to punish; the mindset of an underdog makes you look for which parts of the world you can change.
Trump fell into a host of difficulties that consumed his presidency as he raged against an investigation that was motivated in large part by a scam. My party’s candidate won, and he never got a fair chance to do the job because Democrats couldn’t accept that he’d won. That’s my own grievance. For my part, I’m ready to move on.
The American experiment was always a test of whether a diverse group of people could govern themselves and be free, and many of us have decided that the results are in and the answer is no.
Victimhood and hegemony actually have a lot in common: they’re the products of hierarchical worldviews. Both ways of thinking structure the world according to networks of power. Critical race theorists believe in a ladder of oppression where white people are at the top, followed by Asians, then Latinos, with black people and Native Americans at the bottom. That’s what the term “BIPOC” is meant to remind people of—it separates out black and indigenous people for special recognition, lumps all other people of color like Asians and Latinos together, and further separates all those groups from white people. Meanwhile, Marxists say the ladder of oppression is constructed by degrees of wealth. Feminists see a sex-based pecking order. The concept of intersectionality introduced by UCLA professor Kimberle Crenshaw allows one to blend all these ladders together, constructing a complex web of power where people fall or climb the rungs of power based on who they’re interacting with, as context renders different hierarchies salient.
But if all you can see is a ladder of power relations, that’s all you’ll be able to create. If you see a nation where a racial caste system orders everything, you’ll think that equality requires and even balance of power. And then because the old ladder of oppression had a long reign, you’ll think the only way to get an even balance of power is to create a new hierarchy that simply inverts the old one. … When you describe the world’s evils in hierarchical power structures, you’re prone to thinking the best you can do is flip the ladder of oppression on its head.
Of course, there are real injustices out there, real power imbalances between groups, but you can’t make identifying them the foundation of your worldview. If you spend all your time thinking about how people are unequal, you won’t even know what it would mean to be equals. You’ll think that justice is nothing more than the absence of injustice.
Victimhood fits laziness like a glove. Note that even when antiwork superstars like Doreen Ford explicitly defend laziness as a virtue, they have to justify it by saying indolence is an appropriate response to capitalism’s exploitation—stealing from your employers can't be just laziness or greed; it has to be part of a grand fight for justice. In the same way, when progressive politicians and activists argue that taxpayers ought to cover their student loans, to avoid the charge that it’s just laziness they need a victimhood narrative like systemic racism to give them cover. A good victimhood narrative dresses up naked self-interest until it looks like nobility. It allows you to pretend to fight for others as you fight for nothing but yourself.
Victimhood has become so entrenched in American culture that it even determines the way we talk to each other and the things we can say. It determines which historical figures we remember and how we remember them. It determines who gets to talk first, or who gets to talk at all. It determines how we address each other, which often means that when we disagree on pronouns, we simply don’t talk to each other or about each other.
The inevitable consequence of the growing category of things you just can’t say is that you don’t voice your true views in public, leading to national policies that a majority don’t actually believe in, but everyone must be seen to believe in. You can’t, for instance, point out the hypocrisy between saying sexual orientation is immutably inherited (despite the total absence of a gay gene), while saying that gender is completely fluid over one’s life (despite the existence of X and Y chromosomes). So we will create public policies founded on contradictory beliefs, which can only lead to new injustice. … Meanwhile, in private, we increasingly associate only with people like us because they’re the only ones we can speak freely to. Then our beliefs are reinforced. All the while, resentment grows.
Forgiving someone’s bigotry involves not giving up a grievance you have a right to, but understanding that what they did to you was the least and smallest part of who they are, that they merely mistook you for the least and smallest part of who you are.
Although the cycle of victimhood may seem endless, it can be broken simply by seeing yourself and others for what you really are. 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.
The heart of the idea [of the Difference Principle] is that we would all approve of a society with some inequality if—and only if—that relative inequality allowed everyone to have more in absolute terms. From behind the veil of ignorance, not knowing whether we’ll be the richest or poorest members of society when we remove our veils, after ensuring that we’ll have equal rights and equality of opportunity, we’ll want to make sure that if we’re the worst off, we’ll still be doing as well as possible. Instead of embracing perfect equality at the cost of having everyone spending hours each day standing in line at barren supermarkets, we’ll choose the world where even the worst off have full bellies, air-conditioning, and smartphones, even if the best off have yachts. And who knows? If the society truly has fair equality of opportunity, we can all dream of owning yachts took one day, and a few really will.
At first glance, the idea makes perfect sense: if widening wealth inequality is the problem, a wealth tax must be the solution. It sounds good, but in my opinion it would undoubtedly cause a market crash, one that would cost the middle class and poor far more than the wealthy.
The far left’s Manichean worldview doesn’t allow it to see that the real world is more complex than it is convenient. Everything must be good or evil, and since wealthy people must be bad, taxing what makes them bad must be good. People on the far left sometimes seem to derive their facts from their values instead of other facts. This approach often makes their ideals sound more reasonable than their prescriptions.
Ocasio-Cortez has pushed for raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent on incomes over $10 million, but any kind of income tax would leave the wealthiest Americans entirely unscathed and prevent others from joining their ranks. Raising income taxes would increase tax evasion, decrease social mobility, and widen wealth inequality. … Income taxes prevent the middle class from accumulating wealth, tying a heavy anchor to it while leaving the richest untouched. They also give people incentive to take it easy instead of working hard, since they know they’ll just hand a hefty chunk of the fruits of their labor over to the government anyway. That incentive to be lazy reduces economic productivity, ultimately dragging everyone down.
Victimhood identities have become like magic words. Invoke the right ones and you get into college, get a good job, get respect and status, get heard.
Let go of these attachments that cause you such pain, these false identities. Let go of your false inferiority; let go of your false superiority. Let go of the grievances that give you a false purpose, a thing to hold on to. Let go of the tribal identities that give you comfort as the world grows dark.
This book examines the culture of victimhood we now have in the U.S. Americans have always loved a good underdog story. Victimhood is similar, except it doesn’t require any work. Underdogs always work to overcome injustice and poverty and oppression. Victims just have to whine and sit there and hope people will come and coddle them like children. It’s not a healthy mindset.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate grievances. But victimhood is now used as a power play, with everyone scrambling to get to the top of the ladder of oppression — because only villains would dare challenge a victim.
There’s a lot of philosophizing in the book, from the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to the philosophies of equality and fairness.
The writing is very engaging with many interesting points. While I don’t completely agree everything he says, I feel like he is someone whom you could have a lively debate with and still come away friends.
I had quite a few highlights, added below.
Language: Occasional strong language
Sexual Content: None
Violence/Gore: Brief mentions of violence in the news
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
=============================================
The racism I experience doesn’t define me. My actions do that.
“Stop Asian Hate,” progressives chanted in 2020 following allegations that the coronavirus may have leaked from a Chinese lab. Yet every high-achieving Asian American kid in this country remembers the day they learned that their race would be an obstacle when applying to elite colleges, remember the way they learned the American promise of equality is in some ways still only a promise. Because colleges like Harvard can’t legally admit that they’re rejecting high-scoring Asian applicants because of racial quota systems designed to help black and Hispanic students, they’re forced to say Asians fall short on “personality scores.” How progressive.
The right way to make further progress as a country isn’t to eradicate every last remnant of racism at all costs, constructing every-more-elaborate linguistic purification rituals to gradually atrophy to irrelevance. By contrast, the antiracist movement in America instead throws kerosene on those final burning embers of racism—inflaming the very problem that it supposedly addresses. Antiracism often speaks racism into existence by demanding that we view and treat people differently on the basis of their skin color.
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going is going to ride a Land Rover, but my great-grandson is going to have to ride a camel again. Hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” (attributed to Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum)
Underdog stories and victimhood tales are like the light and dark sides of the Force: they have something in common, but the dark side is the easier path to power, even if it leaves you worse off in the end.
It’s kind of funny and sad that our antiracist society gives serious consideration to the argument that elite colleges aren’t discriminating against Asians because we’re just cowardly, unlikeable, unkind worker drones who aren’t leaders. It’s common knowledge that this the exact same argument that Harvard made when it discriminated against Jews almost a century ago. … It called that “the Jewish problem.”
What liberals miss in their ruthless pursuit of social justice is that elevating some races above others based on a hierarchy of victimhood inevitably creates new victims.
When an officer kills a black suspect, no matter what the facts of the case are, the default presumption these days is that the officer is guilty until proven innocent, especially if they’re white—and then if the criminal justice system does find them innocent, that’s simply taken as evidence that the system itself is racist.
There are two main flaws with the idea that the war on drugs and mass incarceration were created by white backlash to the civil rights movement: first, violent crime skyrocketed in the years before tough-on-crime laws, and second, black people were often the ones pushing for them.
Black support for being tough on crime isn’t just a thing of the past; it’s still present today. It is a bitter irony that the white liberals loudly pushing the “defund the police” movement on the basis of the New Jim Crow victimhood narrative are drowning out black communities who want to keep police present [sic] constant or even increase it.
As the victimhood narrative becomes common wisdom, it replaces the voices of black people themselves. Eventually, well-educated white people end up making policy decisions on behalf of black ones, so confident in what they want that they see no need to listen to them. Even worse, on the occasions when black people do speak out against he victimhood narrative, politicians, media, and activists will be tempted to say that they don’t really know what they want, that their desires have been corrupted by white supremacy. This is how dark-skinned people who resist progressive views on criminal justice end up getting called Uncle Toms.
Being a sore loser is a danger to democracy no matter which party it comes from. It chills me to see the Democratic Party moving in the same direction. In part in response to the victimhood narrative of a stolen election, Republicans in many states passed a variety of voter reform laws, so far at least thirty-three bills in nineteen states. In truth, many of these reforms strike me as minor tweaks that won’t affect elections much one way or the other; some of them seem to be symbolic gestures that legislators are “doing something.”
___But President Biden and other top Democrats call them Jim Crow 2.0. I guess that’s because “the new Jim Crow” was already taken by one of their other victimhood narratives. … Andrew E Busch sums it up by saying, “Jim Crow 1.0 entailed widespread murder and violent intimidation, onerous taxes, rigged literacy tests, and a flat prohibition on blacks voting in the primary elections of the dominant party, leading to results such as Mississippi’s 7% voter-turnout rate for African Americans. ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ mean(while), requires that voters show proper identification, vote in the correct precinct, and request their absentee ballot every two years instead of every four. Someday, historians will marvel that anyone ever took seriously the argument that these two regimes bore any relation to one another.”
One problem with viewing the world through the lens of victimhood is that it forces you to look for an oppressor—it’s easier and more viscerally satisfying to blame people than policies or trends. The mindset of victimhood makes you look for an enemy to punish; the mindset of an underdog makes you look for which parts of the world you can change.
Trump fell into a host of difficulties that consumed his presidency as he raged against an investigation that was motivated in large part by a scam. My party’s candidate won, and he never got a fair chance to do the job because Democrats couldn’t accept that he’d won. That’s my own grievance. For my part, I’m ready to move on.
The American experiment was always a test of whether a diverse group of people could govern themselves and be free, and many of us have decided that the results are in and the answer is no.
Victimhood and hegemony actually have a lot in common: they’re the products of hierarchical worldviews. Both ways of thinking structure the world according to networks of power. Critical race theorists believe in a ladder of oppression where white people are at the top, followed by Asians, then Latinos, with black people and Native Americans at the bottom. That’s what the term “BIPOC” is meant to remind people of—it separates out black and indigenous people for special recognition, lumps all other people of color like Asians and Latinos together, and further separates all those groups from white people. Meanwhile, Marxists say the ladder of oppression is constructed by degrees of wealth. Feminists see a sex-based pecking order. The concept of intersectionality introduced by UCLA professor Kimberle Crenshaw allows one to blend all these ladders together, constructing a complex web of power where people fall or climb the rungs of power based on who they’re interacting with, as context renders different hierarchies salient.
But if all you can see is a ladder of power relations, that’s all you’ll be able to create. If you see a nation where a racial caste system orders everything, you’ll think that equality requires and even balance of power. And then because the old ladder of oppression had a long reign, you’ll think the only way to get an even balance of power is to create a new hierarchy that simply inverts the old one. … When you describe the world’s evils in hierarchical power structures, you’re prone to thinking the best you can do is flip the ladder of oppression on its head.
Of course, there are real injustices out there, real power imbalances between groups, but you can’t make identifying them the foundation of your worldview. If you spend all your time thinking about how people are unequal, you won’t even know what it would mean to be equals. You’ll think that justice is nothing more than the absence of injustice.
Victimhood fits laziness like a glove. Note that even when antiwork superstars like Doreen Ford explicitly defend laziness as a virtue, they have to justify it by saying indolence is an appropriate response to capitalism’s exploitation—stealing from your employers can't be just laziness or greed; it has to be part of a grand fight for justice. In the same way, when progressive politicians and activists argue that taxpayers ought to cover their student loans, to avoid the charge that it’s just laziness they need a victimhood narrative like systemic racism to give them cover. A good victimhood narrative dresses up naked self-interest until it looks like nobility. It allows you to pretend to fight for others as you fight for nothing but yourself.
Victimhood has become so entrenched in American culture that it even determines the way we talk to each other and the things we can say. It determines which historical figures we remember and how we remember them. It determines who gets to talk first, or who gets to talk at all. It determines how we address each other, which often means that when we disagree on pronouns, we simply don’t talk to each other or about each other.
The inevitable consequence of the growing category of things you just can’t say is that you don’t voice your true views in public, leading to national policies that a majority don’t actually believe in, but everyone must be seen to believe in. You can’t, for instance, point out the hypocrisy between saying sexual orientation is immutably inherited (despite the total absence of a gay gene), while saying that gender is completely fluid over one’s life (despite the existence of X and Y chromosomes). So we will create public policies founded on contradictory beliefs, which can only lead to new injustice. … Meanwhile, in private, we increasingly associate only with people like us because they’re the only ones we can speak freely to. Then our beliefs are reinforced. All the while, resentment grows.
Forgiving someone’s bigotry involves not giving up a grievance you have a right to, but understanding that what they did to you was the least and smallest part of who they are, that they merely mistook you for the least and smallest part of who you are.
Although the cycle of victimhood may seem endless, it can be broken simply by seeing yourself and others for what you really are. 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.
The heart of the idea [of the Difference Principle] is that we would all approve of a society with some inequality if—and only if—that relative inequality allowed everyone to have more in absolute terms. From behind the veil of ignorance, not knowing whether we’ll be the richest or poorest members of society when we remove our veils, after ensuring that we’ll have equal rights and equality of opportunity, we’ll want to make sure that if we’re the worst off, we’ll still be doing as well as possible. Instead of embracing perfect equality at the cost of having everyone spending hours each day standing in line at barren supermarkets, we’ll choose the world where even the worst off have full bellies, air-conditioning, and smartphones, even if the best off have yachts. And who knows? If the society truly has fair equality of opportunity, we can all dream of owning yachts took one day, and a few really will.
At first glance, the idea makes perfect sense: if widening wealth inequality is the problem, a wealth tax must be the solution. It sounds good, but in my opinion it would undoubtedly cause a market crash, one that would cost the middle class and poor far more than the wealthy.
The far left’s Manichean worldview doesn’t allow it to see that the real world is more complex than it is convenient. Everything must be good or evil, and since wealthy people must be bad, taxing what makes them bad must be good. People on the far left sometimes seem to derive their facts from their values instead of other facts. This approach often makes their ideals sound more reasonable than their prescriptions.
Ocasio-Cortez has pushed for raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent on incomes over $10 million, but any kind of income tax would leave the wealthiest Americans entirely unscathed and prevent others from joining their ranks. Raising income taxes would increase tax evasion, decrease social mobility, and widen wealth inequality. … Income taxes prevent the middle class from accumulating wealth, tying a heavy anchor to it while leaving the richest untouched. They also give people incentive to take it easy instead of working hard, since they know they’ll just hand a hefty chunk of the fruits of their labor over to the government anyway. That incentive to be lazy reduces economic productivity, ultimately dragging everyone down.
Victimhood identities have become like magic words. Invoke the right ones and you get into college, get a good job, get respect and status, get heard.
Let go of these attachments that cause you such pain, these false identities. Let go of your false inferiority; let go of your false superiority. Let go of the grievances that give you a false purpose, a thing to hold on to. Let go of the tribal identities that give you comfort as the world grows dark.
October 14, 2022
Vivek Ramaswamy set a very high bar for himself with his first book Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam. Although this book has its good parts it is less focused than Woke, Inc. Indeed, the author seems to be being a little self-indulgent by sharing a broad swath of his philosophical, political and religious beliefs, along with his favorite historical anecdotes, as opposed to delving deeply enough into most topics to make his case ultimately compelling. Nevertheless, Ramaswamy is clearly a very intelligent person and generally has the courage to speak his mind regardless of whether or not it offends people including those on his (conservative) side. As such the book ultimately felt like being on the listening end of a loose conversation with an intelligent person discussing his overall view of the nation.
Ramaswamy's central thesis is that, a few decades ago, the United States began a decline as a result of its success up until that point. He argues that whereas Americans used to see themselves as underdogs they began to increasingly see themselves as victims. The key difference is that an underdog is primarily reliant on themselves and optimistically faces the challenge of rising up to excellence. A victim, by contrast, is convinced that there are unable to rise up by themselves and is dependent on making others recognize their victimhood and change society to help them instead.
To his credit, Ramaswamy does go a good job of providing examples of a growing sense of victimhood from both the left and right. From the left it is rather obvious: claims that all racial minorities and women were victims of America's dominate ideologies and laws up until the near past and that they continue to be the victims of racism and sexism to this day. Here Ramaswamy believes that although some sexism and racism linger it is no longer that significant and the response to it, as if it were just as bad as it was in the past, generally does much more harm to the country than good. He compares it to an auto-immune response ravaging the body after the disease it was trying to fight has already been cleared or is at the point of subsiding on its own.
On the right, where Ramaswamy begins his exploration of American victimhood, he cites The Lost Cause narrative and conservatives', especially southern conservatives', long campaign to insulate themselves from Federal government power so as to effectively revert much of the gains of the Civil War. His analyses of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and legal misinterpretations are quite strong in making this point. Then, switching to looking at history closer to the present, he makes a compelling case that the legal system incentivizes groups to convince courts that they have been historic victims to win the ultimate prize of obtaining a standard of "strict scrutiny" for any laws passed which may affect them. If they lose this quest, however, the laws are most likely to be subject to mere "rational basis" which Ramaswamy describes as an effective rubber stamp.
With regard to current right wing feelings of victimization Ramaswamy cites claims that the 2020 election was stolen as the best example. Ramaswamy does not believe any of it. He points out that Trump always claims fraud when he losses. He did so when he lost a primary to Ted Cruz. He also discusses some of the problems with the film "2000 Mules" which claims to provide proof. Ramaswamy describes how he regarded Stacey Abrams' claims that her election was stolen as non-sense. Ramaswamy is greatly disappointed that rather than accept the fact that sometimes in a democracy you will lose and not get your way and move on, Republicans bought into the stolen election conspiracy theories wholesale and foresook the opportunity to be the non-victim party. Ramaswamy describes how alienated he now feels from conservative movements and how he is in search of a "shade of red" that he feels must exist but has yet to see.
Although, like in Woke, Inc, the legal arguments are the book's strongest points I did not think that Ramaswamy provided a compelling case that it is more common than not for Americans to now see themselves as victims. On the right, yes, they do believe in a stolen election but does that really affect their overall view of themselves greatly? That case is not made.
On the left, the situation is a little stranger. It is white liberals who most strongly buy into the notion that there is still rampant racism and sexism in America as opposed to those who are supposed to be its victims. Although Ramaswamy does cite statistics showing that white liberals are much more likely to support defunding the police than black people who are supposed to be the number one victims he misses citing other statistics that could help his case. For instance, there have been surveys which ask black people whether personal encounters with racism has been a big factor holding them back from success in life. A strong majority do not think that it has been a factor. At the same time, if you ask them if it has been a big factor holding other black people back, then a majority answer that it is. In general this mirrors the situation on the left of imagining that many more people in this country consider themselves legitimate victims than the number who actually do.
Although Ramaswamy is generally willing to speak his mind without regard to whether or not it offends anyone he did seem to pull his punches in some places. For example, I thought that Ramaswamy held back his punches in describing Critical Race Theory as non-Marxist since it focuses on race as opposed to class. This has some technical truth to it but the problem is that Ramaswamy does not go on to discuss whether or not CRT is neo-Marxist or just Marxism with race taking the place of class (some call this identity Marxism). He also does not discuss whether the economic implications of CRT, such as affirmative action and reparations, are Marxist.
Along these lines, I feel that Ramaswamy is either holding back his punches to make it look like he is balanced by accusing both the left and right of about an equal amount of falsely feeling victimized or he is not very familiar with neo-Marxism and post-modernism. It is pretty clear that in academia these movements are explicitly trying to find as many victims in modern America as they can and get as much sympathy for changing that as possible. By contrast, it is not possible to find anything comparable among conservative academics. With a strong victim ideology that originates in academia it does not seem that both sides deserve about equal shares of responsibility for victimization cultures.
Overall I found that Ramaswamy took too much of an opportunity to share his views on a wide range of topics loosely connected to victimhood narratives, for example the Federal Reserve's role in all of it, rather than dive more deeply into a more limited set of areas to make his case more compelling.
Ramaswamy's central thesis is that, a few decades ago, the United States began a decline as a result of its success up until that point. He argues that whereas Americans used to see themselves as underdogs they began to increasingly see themselves as victims. The key difference is that an underdog is primarily reliant on themselves and optimistically faces the challenge of rising up to excellence. A victim, by contrast, is convinced that there are unable to rise up by themselves and is dependent on making others recognize their victimhood and change society to help them instead.
To his credit, Ramaswamy does go a good job of providing examples of a growing sense of victimhood from both the left and right. From the left it is rather obvious: claims that all racial minorities and women were victims of America's dominate ideologies and laws up until the near past and that they continue to be the victims of racism and sexism to this day. Here Ramaswamy believes that although some sexism and racism linger it is no longer that significant and the response to it, as if it were just as bad as it was in the past, generally does much more harm to the country than good. He compares it to an auto-immune response ravaging the body after the disease it was trying to fight has already been cleared or is at the point of subsiding on its own.
On the right, where Ramaswamy begins his exploration of American victimhood, he cites The Lost Cause narrative and conservatives', especially southern conservatives', long campaign to insulate themselves from Federal government power so as to effectively revert much of the gains of the Civil War. His analyses of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and legal misinterpretations are quite strong in making this point. Then, switching to looking at history closer to the present, he makes a compelling case that the legal system incentivizes groups to convince courts that they have been historic victims to win the ultimate prize of obtaining a standard of "strict scrutiny" for any laws passed which may affect them. If they lose this quest, however, the laws are most likely to be subject to mere "rational basis" which Ramaswamy describes as an effective rubber stamp.
With regard to current right wing feelings of victimization Ramaswamy cites claims that the 2020 election was stolen as the best example. Ramaswamy does not believe any of it. He points out that Trump always claims fraud when he losses. He did so when he lost a primary to Ted Cruz. He also discusses some of the problems with the film "2000 Mules" which claims to provide proof. Ramaswamy describes how he regarded Stacey Abrams' claims that her election was stolen as non-sense. Ramaswamy is greatly disappointed that rather than accept the fact that sometimes in a democracy you will lose and not get your way and move on, Republicans bought into the stolen election conspiracy theories wholesale and foresook the opportunity to be the non-victim party. Ramaswamy describes how alienated he now feels from conservative movements and how he is in search of a "shade of red" that he feels must exist but has yet to see.
Although, like in Woke, Inc, the legal arguments are the book's strongest points I did not think that Ramaswamy provided a compelling case that it is more common than not for Americans to now see themselves as victims. On the right, yes, they do believe in a stolen election but does that really affect their overall view of themselves greatly? That case is not made.
On the left, the situation is a little stranger. It is white liberals who most strongly buy into the notion that there is still rampant racism and sexism in America as opposed to those who are supposed to be its victims. Although Ramaswamy does cite statistics showing that white liberals are much more likely to support defunding the police than black people who are supposed to be the number one victims he misses citing other statistics that could help his case. For instance, there have been surveys which ask black people whether personal encounters with racism has been a big factor holding them back from success in life. A strong majority do not think that it has been a factor. At the same time, if you ask them if it has been a big factor holding other black people back, then a majority answer that it is. In general this mirrors the situation on the left of imagining that many more people in this country consider themselves legitimate victims than the number who actually do.
Although Ramaswamy is generally willing to speak his mind without regard to whether or not it offends anyone he did seem to pull his punches in some places. For example, I thought that Ramaswamy held back his punches in describing Critical Race Theory as non-Marxist since it focuses on race as opposed to class. This has some technical truth to it but the problem is that Ramaswamy does not go on to discuss whether or not CRT is neo-Marxist or just Marxism with race taking the place of class (some call this identity Marxism). He also does not discuss whether the economic implications of CRT, such as affirmative action and reparations, are Marxist.
Along these lines, I feel that Ramaswamy is either holding back his punches to make it look like he is balanced by accusing both the left and right of about an equal amount of falsely feeling victimized or he is not very familiar with neo-Marxism and post-modernism. It is pretty clear that in academia these movements are explicitly trying to find as many victims in modern America as they can and get as much sympathy for changing that as possible. By contrast, it is not possible to find anything comparable among conservative academics. With a strong victim ideology that originates in academia it does not seem that both sides deserve about equal shares of responsibility for victimization cultures.
Overall I found that Ramaswamy took too much of an opportunity to share his views on a wide range of topics loosely connected to victimhood narratives, for example the Federal Reserve's role in all of it, rather than dive more deeply into a more limited set of areas to make his case more compelling.
March 22, 2024
Victimhood status & identity politics has been on the rise in this country for a very long time. I found this to be an interesting read and well worth the time to read it, for knowledge's sake. This world, in general, and more specifically our country, these United States, are at stake. It is, in fact, a battle for the "soul of our nation." Are we to be victims or are we to be the old time Americans who stood up for something that matters? To claim the victim card, we are, in essence, claiming a hand-out and want the governing authorities to help us obtain a remedy to the matter. The problem being, the government is she who is addressing the fact that we are victims in all of this. It is an added layer, if you will, to use the government as a "god-like" referee and as the end all be all for all of our problems, which places them in the position where they desire to be. But as an American, we must be willing to stand up on our own - to win or to fail! A great primer for those who are trying to understand the ideology of the woke.
September 18, 2022
Vivek Ramaswamy is not your typical conservative. Some of his policy suggestions - such as the inheritance tax he discusses in the penultimate chapter - would be viewed as anathema by most conservatives and probably all libertarians.
In "Nation of Victims," Ramaswamy has written the natural follow-up to "Woke, Inc." While that book dealt with corporate America and how we can combat the woke-ness of the corporate giants that now run the country, his latest book is more about how a nation can survive when it seems like it is doomed to fall under the weight of its excesses. He uses examples from history, including the U.S. Civil War and, particularly, the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, to make his point that victimhood is destroying the country. His solution is a return to merit - but only to a point. Interestingly, he comes to the conclusion - backed by an assortment of authors including John Rawls and Thomas Piketty in particular - that merit is a good thing, but only to a point. Eventually, a meritocracy will give way to an aristocracy for reasons that I won't go into here.
All in all, it was an interesting analysis of some of the major issues plaguing the USA and contained some interesting solutions. I give Ramaswamy credit not just for raising the issues, but for thinking about solutions, whether or not I agree with them.
I didn't think this was as interesting as his last book but it was still a worthwhile read.
In "Nation of Victims," Ramaswamy has written the natural follow-up to "Woke, Inc." While that book dealt with corporate America and how we can combat the woke-ness of the corporate giants that now run the country, his latest book is more about how a nation can survive when it seems like it is doomed to fall under the weight of its excesses. He uses examples from history, including the U.S. Civil War and, particularly, the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, to make his point that victimhood is destroying the country. His solution is a return to merit - but only to a point. Interestingly, he comes to the conclusion - backed by an assortment of authors including John Rawls and Thomas Piketty in particular - that merit is a good thing, but only to a point. Eventually, a meritocracy will give way to an aristocracy for reasons that I won't go into here.
All in all, it was an interesting analysis of some of the major issues plaguing the USA and contained some interesting solutions. I give Ramaswamy credit not just for raising the issues, but for thinking about solutions, whether or not I agree with them.
I didn't think this was as interesting as his last book but it was still a worthwhile read.
Read
April 3, 2023I so wanted to like this presidential candidate!!!! I was on board until he said he wants to “preserve meritocracy” and diminish the “wealth gap” by means of a hard inheritance tax. Citing Plato to try to make the argument that families passing down their wealth is the problem - that’s when people don’t have to work hard anymore - when they inherit wealth. Leading to aristocracies in the long run. I’m sorry, but what?
Problem 1) It takes skill to keep and grow wealth. Many children have been handed an inheritance on a silver platter and then lost it. THAT is a meritocracy. Maybe he hasn’t had a significant amount of money long enough to understand how that works?
Problem 2) Then why save? Why should Americans look to the future (generations) if there is nothing they can do now for their kids? There’s all this talk about how hedonistic Americans are now, living in the moment, nothing in savings, etc. A large inheritance tax would kill any last ounce of motivation to think beyond one’s self.
Problem 3) For an entrepreneur, he has a surprising scarcity mindset when it comes to money. It’s not a zero sum game. If my neighbour is rich, that doesn’t mean there is less money to be made by myself. I’m not convinced by the monkeys and cucumbers experiment he cites about the inherent problem with wealth inequality.
Problem 4) Just because he wouldn’t pass on his wealth to his children does not mean he has the right to dictate how other parents decide to spend THEIR hard-earned money. It’s called “freedom”. His weak response to this was “redistribution of duty”. I’m sorry, but no.
I don’t think the logic of inherited wealth leading to an aristocracy is legitimate. Today, money is money. That’s why we have “old money” vs “new money” snobbery. Which I think isn’t as big of a deal as television dramas make it seem. In the US, the so-called “aristocracy” changes as people make and lose fortunes. Social mobility. That’s not how old Europe worked. I really don’t think this is a valid argument for an inheritance tax on Americans.
Problem 1) It takes skill to keep and grow wealth. Many children have been handed an inheritance on a silver platter and then lost it. THAT is a meritocracy. Maybe he hasn’t had a significant amount of money long enough to understand how that works?
Problem 2) Then why save? Why should Americans look to the future (generations) if there is nothing they can do now for their kids? There’s all this talk about how hedonistic Americans are now, living in the moment, nothing in savings, etc. A large inheritance tax would kill any last ounce of motivation to think beyond one’s self.
Problem 3) For an entrepreneur, he has a surprising scarcity mindset when it comes to money. It’s not a zero sum game. If my neighbour is rich, that doesn’t mean there is less money to be made by myself. I’m not convinced by the monkeys and cucumbers experiment he cites about the inherent problem with wealth inequality.
Problem 4) Just because he wouldn’t pass on his wealth to his children does not mean he has the right to dictate how other parents decide to spend THEIR hard-earned money. It’s called “freedom”. His weak response to this was “redistribution of duty”. I’m sorry, but no.
I don’t think the logic of inherited wealth leading to an aristocracy is legitimate. Today, money is money. That’s why we have “old money” vs “new money” snobbery. Which I think isn’t as big of a deal as television dramas make it seem. In the US, the so-called “aristocracy” changes as people make and lose fortunes. Social mobility. That’s not how old Europe worked. I really don’t think this is a valid argument for an inheritance tax on Americans.
December 12, 2022
My dad made me watch an episode of Bill Maher and the author was in the show and made points about a need to change victimhood culture in America and how being a victim has become commodified. So I decided to pick up his book and see what else he had to say.
The book addresses interesting issues, but even when I found myself agreeing with the author, his writing style was offputting and made me want to disagree with him. There are some genuinely good points in here. His analysis of the privileges and immunities clause of the constitution and the case law surrounding it was a unique take. However when the book veered into more anecdotal evidence accompanied with a slightly condescending tone, I struggled to finish it.
If you watch the Bill Maher episode he appears on, you’ll get the gist of the book and save yourself a few hours.
The book addresses interesting issues, but even when I found myself agreeing with the author, his writing style was offputting and made me want to disagree with him. There are some genuinely good points in here. His analysis of the privileges and immunities clause of the constitution and the case law surrounding it was a unique take. However when the book veered into more anecdotal evidence accompanied with a slightly condescending tone, I struggled to finish it.
If you watch the Bill Maher episode he appears on, you’ll get the gist of the book and save yourself a few hours.
July 28, 2023
Vivek says USA has turned into a country of victims.
Each "victim" doing its best to get its slice of payback.
It might be a gay woman, a black man , a transgender person, an American Indian or anyone who feels they've been given a raw deal or feel they were oppressed in some way either currently or historically.
The way victimhood is going and how deleterious it is to the country's growth, Vivek surmises it could be the beginning of the American empires fall and compares the current USA to Carthage or the Roman empire and how it looked when it began its decline.
He tries to search for solutions and even suggests a death tax of 59% to help to spread the wealth and reduce laziness amongst the privileged and entitled.
He refers back to his far better book Woke Inc and the current woke culture which has set the stage for a generation of uncreative "victims" that endlessly yearn for a justice that may never come.
Each "victim" doing its best to get its slice of payback.
It might be a gay woman, a black man , a transgender person, an American Indian or anyone who feels they've been given a raw deal or feel they were oppressed in some way either currently or historically.
The way victimhood is going and how deleterious it is to the country's growth, Vivek surmises it could be the beginning of the American empires fall and compares the current USA to Carthage or the Roman empire and how it looked when it began its decline.
He tries to search for solutions and even suggests a death tax of 59% to help to spread the wealth and reduce laziness amongst the privileged and entitled.
He refers back to his far better book Woke Inc and the current woke culture which has set the stage for a generation of uncreative "victims" that endlessly yearn for a justice that may never come.
February 14, 2023
Another well written, interesting, and thought provoking book by Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy discusses how our nation has gone from a nation that believes in the pursuit excellence, to a nation that celebrates victimhood. He is mostly spot on in his arguments and analysis, although there were a few points he made that I'm not sure I totally agree with. He makes an argument for a large inheritance tax because future generations should be made to earn their wealth on their own, rather than being handed their wealth on a silver platter without doing anything to earn it. I do understand his point, but not sure I am in favor of a large inheritance tax. But overall, an excellent read.
September 19, 2022
An interesting perspective on America and how “victim hood” is the new metric for the American Political class narrative.
The author does a fine comparison of Rome/Carthage to America/China and Pluto’s perspective on duty and todays work ethics.
He even incorporates a Hindu belief network of “reincarnation” for America.
Worth the listen/read.
The author does a fine comparison of Rome/Carthage to America/China and Pluto’s perspective on duty and todays work ethics.
He even incorporates a Hindu belief network of “reincarnation” for America.
Worth the listen/read.
December 18, 2022
mixed emotions... some very good points, that needed to be said, and yet.... anyone that believes that being a Gay Black Woman is an automatic/ easy rd to power... what world does he live in.... that's on pg. 199... i went back to read it several times... I was like, what did he just say ... I can't
October 22, 2022
Would have been so much better if Ramaswamy had focused on the culture of victimhood rather than the politics of victimhood throughout the book. When he does set aside the finger pointing, his observations are useful and astute.
March 18, 2023
“A Nation of Victims” is the second book that I have read by Vivek Ramaswamy. The first was “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam.” I enjoyed both of them.
“A Nation of Victims” is different from Woke. “A Nation of Victims” describes a number of examples from history of Americans portraying themselves as victims, such as the south did, portraying themselves after the Civil War as victims of fighting for states’ rights (not slavery) during the Civil War. He also writes about the views of various philosophers on the societal interactions between groups with different agendas which is very interesting.
Ramaswamy describes all of us being victims of one thing or another and it’s one of the few things we all have in common in a very divided nation. There are white victims, black victims, liberal victims, conservative victims, victims of sexism, xenophobia and people who are victims of many other injustices. We have moved from a country which values meritocracy and a work ethic which inherently results in unequal outcomes (as any parent of multiple children will tell you), to one in which we seek to blame every unequal outcome as evidence of some form of victimization.
Ramaswamy writes, “While many groups do face REAL hardships; the question is which mentality best helps us overcome them. One problem with viewing the world through the lens of victimhood is that it forces you to look for an oppressor – it’s easier and viscerally satisfying to blame people than policies or trends. The mindset of victimhood makes you look for an enemy to punish; the mindset of an underdog makes you look for which parts of the world you can change.”
One area where I disagree with Ramaswamy’s view is the idea of implementing a VERY high inheritance tax. His argument is that the children of successful wealthy people are often given too much, they don’t learn to achieve on their own and they routinely squander their privilege. He uses the example of Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus as an example. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and his son Commodus inherited tremendous wealth from his father. While Marcus Aurelius was a wise ruler, his son Commodus was cruel, foolish, sadistic and basically a horrible ruler. Ramaswamy argues that Marcus Aurelius trusted Commodus too much, gave him too much and this contributed to Rome’s long decline under Commodus’ rule. While there may be some merit to the concept that it’s not a good idea to give children too much, I cannot support a policy that inflicts very high taxes on the inheritance of wealth that was very heavily taxed in the first place when it was earned by the parents. High inheritance taxes so politicians can use the money to buy more votes to keep themselves in power? No thanks.
Worth reading.
“A Nation of Victims” is different from Woke. “A Nation of Victims” describes a number of examples from history of Americans portraying themselves as victims, such as the south did, portraying themselves after the Civil War as victims of fighting for states’ rights (not slavery) during the Civil War. He also writes about the views of various philosophers on the societal interactions between groups with different agendas which is very interesting.
Ramaswamy describes all of us being victims of one thing or another and it’s one of the few things we all have in common in a very divided nation. There are white victims, black victims, liberal victims, conservative victims, victims of sexism, xenophobia and people who are victims of many other injustices. We have moved from a country which values meritocracy and a work ethic which inherently results in unequal outcomes (as any parent of multiple children will tell you), to one in which we seek to blame every unequal outcome as evidence of some form of victimization.
Ramaswamy writes, “While many groups do face REAL hardships; the question is which mentality best helps us overcome them. One problem with viewing the world through the lens of victimhood is that it forces you to look for an oppressor – it’s easier and viscerally satisfying to blame people than policies or trends. The mindset of victimhood makes you look for an enemy to punish; the mindset of an underdog makes you look for which parts of the world you can change.”
One area where I disagree with Ramaswamy’s view is the idea of implementing a VERY high inheritance tax. His argument is that the children of successful wealthy people are often given too much, they don’t learn to achieve on their own and they routinely squander their privilege. He uses the example of Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus as an example. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and his son Commodus inherited tremendous wealth from his father. While Marcus Aurelius was a wise ruler, his son Commodus was cruel, foolish, sadistic and basically a horrible ruler. Ramaswamy argues that Marcus Aurelius trusted Commodus too much, gave him too much and this contributed to Rome’s long decline under Commodus’ rule. While there may be some merit to the concept that it’s not a good idea to give children too much, I cannot support a policy that inflicts very high taxes on the inheritance of wealth that was very heavily taxed in the first place when it was earned by the parents. High inheritance taxes so politicians can use the money to buy more votes to keep themselves in power? No thanks.
Worth reading.
September 13, 2022
“The underdog makes a victim of themself; the victim makes a demand of those around them.”
Vivek Ramaswamy’s new book, “Nation of Victims”, is full of bold, common sensible statements like this, found in his opening chapter. He goes on to give personal examples, well know public examples and trace the history of racial victimization. The careful inquiry of Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s concubine/slave, shows how presenting the totality of a story can change the significance completely. We must not cancel our history no matter how unpleasant it is. By reading the whole story, Sally moves from rape victim slave to ferocious mother, hero negotiator and emancipator in waiting; quite the difference and one currently not leaned by students because of CRT.
Vivek makes a strong case that looking for reparations is feeding the victim mentality. His chapter on CRT should be read by everyone who has children, is thinking about having them or cares about our education system. Here again, he traces this subject from its earliest historical manifestation; extremely informative.
Everyone is taken to task in this book. Ramaswamy is a straight shooter and calls foul to conservatives and liberals equally. His mission is to inspire citizens to desire excellence and a spirit of national pride once again. Victim mentality has permeated philosophy, become a way of life and made for lazy people. Physical labor has almost disappeared for outsourcing, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs from middle America. We need to take back American pride, not import some low quality/cost stuff on a freighter with all the intendant issues.
How we accomplish this is an interesting discussion by Vivek. He looks at Roman history and the parallels to contemporary America are amazing. That’s why we shouldn’t cancel history. We need to learn from the good parts and the bad making sure to emulate where appropriate and avoid the same.
Vivek gets very personal sharing about Hindi beliefs of reincarnation and applying them to remaking our nation. It’s obvious how much he cares and that this is more than just 70K words in a book. This is a well tho’t out book that’s reasoned, fair, provoking and causing me to ponder. His ideas on raising taxes after death on the Uber rich are pure genius.
Make a demand of yourself. Bring an open mind to this book. Read it, share it and pray to restore our country back to meritocracy and excellence📚
Vivek Ramaswamy’s new book, “Nation of Victims”, is full of bold, common sensible statements like this, found in his opening chapter. He goes on to give personal examples, well know public examples and trace the history of racial victimization. The careful inquiry of Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s concubine/slave, shows how presenting the totality of a story can change the significance completely. We must not cancel our history no matter how unpleasant it is. By reading the whole story, Sally moves from rape victim slave to ferocious mother, hero negotiator and emancipator in waiting; quite the difference and one currently not leaned by students because of CRT.
Vivek makes a strong case that looking for reparations is feeding the victim mentality. His chapter on CRT should be read by everyone who has children, is thinking about having them or cares about our education system. Here again, he traces this subject from its earliest historical manifestation; extremely informative.
Everyone is taken to task in this book. Ramaswamy is a straight shooter and calls foul to conservatives and liberals equally. His mission is to inspire citizens to desire excellence and a spirit of national pride once again. Victim mentality has permeated philosophy, become a way of life and made for lazy people. Physical labor has almost disappeared for outsourcing, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs from middle America. We need to take back American pride, not import some low quality/cost stuff on a freighter with all the intendant issues.
How we accomplish this is an interesting discussion by Vivek. He looks at Roman history and the parallels to contemporary America are amazing. That’s why we shouldn’t cancel history. We need to learn from the good parts and the bad making sure to emulate where appropriate and avoid the same.
Vivek gets very personal sharing about Hindi beliefs of reincarnation and applying them to remaking our nation. It’s obvious how much he cares and that this is more than just 70K words in a book. This is a well tho’t out book that’s reasoned, fair, provoking and causing me to ponder. His ideas on raising taxes after death on the Uber rich are pure genius.
Make a demand of yourself. Bring an open mind to this book. Read it, share it and pray to restore our country back to meritocracy and excellence📚
November 9, 2023
Given Ramaswany's reputation among conservatives, I was greatly disappointed. This is one of those self-indulgent books written by someone who is not a clever as he thinks he is. While being led by the jacket notes to expect a "towering intellect", what I found was someone who is not much beyond a bright undergrad.
One of his most salient faults as a thinker is that he asserts political talking points as if they are established arguments, with no bother to establish them or even consideration that establishing them might be worth some attention. For example he frequently repeats assertions to the effect that in the US at this time victimhood is the key to power and wealth, without any scrutiny of this dogma. Since it is to me incomprehensible, some argument or at least explanation would have been welcome.
I give three stars rather than two because it is not without merit; his explorations of what excellence means, and of forgiveness as a path to excellence, are a good start on such a conversation despite their simplicity and brevity. But for the most part I can't recommend this book as a way of understanding the modern "conservative" philosophy for anyone who don't already think they agree with it.
One of his most salient faults as a thinker is that he asserts political talking points as if they are established arguments, with no bother to establish them or even consideration that establishing them might be worth some attention. For example he frequently repeats assertions to the effect that in the US at this time victimhood is the key to power and wealth, without any scrutiny of this dogma. Since it is to me incomprehensible, some argument or at least explanation would have been welcome.
I give three stars rather than two because it is not without merit; his explorations of what excellence means, and of forgiveness as a path to excellence, are a good start on such a conversation despite their simplicity and brevity. But for the most part I can't recommend this book as a way of understanding the modern "conservative" philosophy for anyone who don't already think they agree with it.
January 15, 2024
Mr. Ramaswamy gives an excellent diagnosis and commentary of the current state of American culture, as well as an impressive knowledge of economics - as well as both American, and Ancient World History. His chapter on “Conservative Victimhood” in particular, was vindicating to read as a young conservative who feels frustrated with the GOP establishment’s seeming insistence on losing very slowly - and adoption of a victimhood mindset.
His idea of a 59% [minimum] post-mortem inheritance tax was intriguing. While I’m not a believer yet, I will say I ended the book being less offended by the idea than when he first introduced it. I’ll have to do some more work here.
Vivek is a Hindu - which means that he and I have glaring presuppositional differences, being that I am a hot-blooded Reformed Protestant. Through most of the book, this isn’t an issue - except for when he makes illustrations on reincarnation and “unity with your true self”. Which I would define as “mumbo jumbo”. However, I am happy to walk with Vivek and those who share his faith and values, as co-belligerents against the left’s new religion of “tolerance” - which is just Maoism with more rainbows.
The best part? He’s young, so he’ll be giving the left fits for a long time to come. Great read! Excited to see this guy’s future!
His idea of a 59% [minimum] post-mortem inheritance tax was intriguing. While I’m not a believer yet, I will say I ended the book being less offended by the idea than when he first introduced it. I’ll have to do some more work here.
Vivek is a Hindu - which means that he and I have glaring presuppositional differences, being that I am a hot-blooded Reformed Protestant. Through most of the book, this isn’t an issue - except for when he makes illustrations on reincarnation and “unity with your true self”. Which I would define as “mumbo jumbo”. However, I am happy to walk with Vivek and those who share his faith and values, as co-belligerents against the left’s new religion of “tolerance” - which is just Maoism with more rainbows.
The best part? He’s young, so he’ll be giving the left fits for a long time to come. Great read! Excited to see this guy’s future!
February 20, 2024
I don’t typically review books other than a quick blurb, “yes, I liked it, interesting, snoozefest, etc.” But this book, it needs to be read.
I think it’s important to note that I’ve been voting for nearly 30 years and my political beliefs/party/history/what have you, do not align with this author”s. If you look at the author and immediately judge, you shouldn’t. This is not a political book. This is information every American needs to be exposed to, and truly absorb.
Now I want to deep dive into the Roman Empire lest history repeat its mistakes.
I think it’s important to note that I’ve been voting for nearly 30 years and my political beliefs/party/history/what have you, do not align with this author”s. If you look at the author and immediately judge, you shouldn’t. This is not a political book. This is information every American needs to be exposed to, and truly absorb.
Now I want to deep dive into the Roman Empire lest history repeat its mistakes.
November 12, 2023
I’ve never read a book by someone who I thought was a decent guy that changed my mind so much.
One of the things that changed my mind was this is paraphrased (we need to allow liberals to tell bold faced lies before elections as long as they come out after and say oops, I was misinformed and I really thought what I said was true). He said this is protected free speech.
One thing he said I really agree with “we need to teach our young to be engineers not activist.”
One of the things that changed my mind was this is paraphrased (we need to allow liberals to tell bold faced lies before elections as long as they come out after and say oops, I was misinformed and I really thought what I said was true). He said this is protected free speech.
One thing he said I really agree with “we need to teach our young to be engineers not activist.”
April 12, 2023
I must admit I enjoyed the author's first book more than this one. Ramaswamy writes, "I don't expect you to share my beliefs, whether religious or political," and I suspect very few would agree with all of his diagnoses and prescriptions. Without getting into the weeds with my review, suffice it to say I don't agree with some of his steadfast political ideations in part, whereas I completely agree with the premise of this book. He presents provocative arguments as to what is currently ailing the country, and possible remedies in an attempt to restore it, or at least to enable the nation to be "rebirthed" to some degree. I recommend the book, though it is not necessarily an easy read.
June 18, 2023
Appreciate the general thesis and point of view of the book. Plenty of facts to disagree with, but he provides a needed perspective in my opinion that is optimistic in nature, and thinks the best of everyone.
May 25, 2023
Not impressed. I don't disagree with much. But I have read it elsewhere better.
August 29, 2023
Title is a little misleading. The ending makes a strong argument for reincarnation of American ideals based on what we’ve learned from our mistakes. That sounds more reasonable
January 6, 2024
Excellent, everyone should read this book. Gave me a perspective of what is happening in our country that I did not fully understand. It is NOT political.
Speaks of pros and cons of various ideas. It is about “we the people”.
Speaks of pros and cons of various ideas. It is about “we the people”.
October 22, 2022
(Audiobook) This work looks at a rather unfortunate aspect of modern America: Where everyone wants and needs to play the victim. The author is mainly attacking the left/liberal tendency to do this. However, he does not ignore the right’s propensity to also play the victim card. Needlessly in the author’s opinion. From there, the author looks to try to compare the victim card with the potential fall of Rome aspect of America that has been common in recent literature (although he does go with more of a Carthage look).
The author has his recommendations, but he is not hopeful of adoption. This is a little bit more disorganized of a book than I would prefer. It can hurt his argument, as he can offer some bi-partisan solutions. Still, he leans more towards the conservative side, which will turn off a good segment of the reading population, which is unfortunate, as there is a message that most could stand to hear. America was more built to be the underdog, not the victim. Granted, there are those who have too many disadvantages, but it is a tough balance between those who are struggling and those who are just playing the victim card for their own gain.
The author has his recommendations, but he is not hopeful of adoption. This is a little bit more disorganized of a book than I would prefer. It can hurt his argument, as he can offer some bi-partisan solutions. Still, he leans more towards the conservative side, which will turn off a good segment of the reading population, which is unfortunate, as there is a message that most could stand to hear. America was more built to be the underdog, not the victim. Granted, there are those who have too many disadvantages, but it is a tough balance between those who are struggling and those who are just playing the victim card for their own gain.
December 14, 2022
I was really looking forward to this book since I've really been feeling the same thing as the title: that America is currently full of victims due to extreme identity politics. I just did not like the way the author wrote. It came off arrogant while also trying to justify that he wasn't arrogant because he was an expert so how could he possibly be arrogant, right? Wrong. It was annoying to read.
There were several really great points made but it was overshadowed by an extra hundred pages that didn't need to be there because it was extreme fluff. This could've been a blog series. It took me so long to read this and I just wanted to stop multiple times.
I received this ARC from NetGalley and Hatchette Book Group: Center Street in exchange for an honest review.
There were several really great points made but it was overshadowed by an extra hundred pages that didn't need to be there because it was extreme fluff. This could've been a blog series. It took me so long to read this and I just wanted to stop multiple times.
I received this ARC from NetGalley and Hatchette Book Group: Center Street in exchange for an honest review.
October 6, 2023
For those that may be unfamiliar with this Presidential Candidate, he is well worth the read. His prior book Woke, Inc. brought clarity to the identity movement. Nation of Victims elicits a similar flavor but with a different perspective; how certain politics create a system of institutions in charge of caring for victims.
In a recent Wall Street Journal, he took up the challenges of the Federal Reserve and laid an incredibly innovative path forward and away from the dual mandate.
Though he is running as a Republican, those on the Democrat side can take note. If there is one book that they should read, this might be it. Vivek is not just intelligent and deeply read, he reconstructs tradition, common sense notions of good citizenry and good governance. - Tom L.
In a recent Wall Street Journal, he took up the challenges of the Federal Reserve and laid an incredibly innovative path forward and away from the dual mandate.
Though he is running as a Republican, those on the Democrat side can take note. If there is one book that they should read, this might be it. Vivek is not just intelligent and deeply read, he reconstructs tradition, common sense notions of good citizenry and good governance. - Tom L.
January 3, 2024
Not as tightly argued or as interesting as Woke Inc. I was fully prepared to give it 4 stars until the final chapter and his thoughts on the inheritance tax. That chapter was so far beyond stupid that I had to knock off another star.
P.S. Your parents' neighbor (assuming you didn't make that story up, which I more than half suspect you did) is an a--hat; race has nothing to do with it. Even his own wife knows he's an a--hat; that's why she apologized for him.
P.S. Your parents' neighbor (assuming you didn't make that story up, which I more than half suspect you did) is an a--hat; race has nothing to do with it. Even his own wife knows he's an a--hat; that's why she apologized for him.
Read
August 17, 2023I picked up this book to understand Vivek Ramaswamy as he's a candidate running in the 2024 presidential election. I want to like Vivek, he's a founder. He understand value creation because he founded biotech company which has developed and brought new drugs to market. BioTech is a tough industry where you win by grinding through a long and slow discovery process. He's articulate and well reasoned which unfortunately is an exception for the highest land in the office.
In this book, Vivek identifies some things which I agree with. In the past, there was so much room to grow as a society many games positive sum (going out west to explore, lots of uncontested scope, low barriers to entry) and now we have much less room making many games zero sum (attention marketplace has saturated people's attention, many mature industries have higher barriers to entry due to massive organizations participating, there's less new uncontested scope both ideological and physical, reaching physical constraints of the world around us). In a positive sum game, I can win without someone else loosing. In a zero sum game, I can win only if someone else looses. It seems like some want to solve this problem by being delusional optimistic about the situation, creating scope out of thin air by finding new ways to capture attention and finding new things to be worried about (sexuality, identity politics, infinite lists of prior injustices). Others want to solve this by finding new frontiers through questionable means like deregulation (crypto) and space exploration. Some want to solve this through monolithic control policy where the government picks the winners and the losers based on the status quo or who was victimized the most.
Vivek's platform seems to lean towards solutions of making more of the games our society runs on positive sum instead of zero sum. This is probably the only workable policy solution but I wish someone would at least try to take a stab at build a world where we're better at coordinating a large number of actors through sharing instead of making everything a shared nothing positive sum game. A part of me thinks that there will always be zero-sum situations and the number of situations is going to continue to grow and maybe we should hedge our bets by trying to figure out what playing the zero-sum optimally looks like.
I don't understand Vivek's support of religion. Religion is a great idea in theory but I have yet to see an implementation where people do not use the religion a way to feel good about doing something without taking the time to decide for themselves whether their actions are optimal. The secular religions have room to breathe because the entrenched ones have many deeply structurally unsound problematic beliefs for the world we live in.
Interesting candidate. Overall, I get the impression that he knows how to play positive sum games better than average and plays zero sum games worse than average. A candidate with these characteristics winning seems like it will likely lead to the next president being a hard left leaning candidate. I think the optimal person for a role is one with high quality judgement who learns fast and is will rounded at executing in different contexts and I'll be watching to see whether Vivek is this person.
In this book, Vivek identifies some things which I agree with. In the past, there was so much room to grow as a society many games positive sum (going out west to explore, lots of uncontested scope, low barriers to entry) and now we have much less room making many games zero sum (attention marketplace has saturated people's attention, many mature industries have higher barriers to entry due to massive organizations participating, there's less new uncontested scope both ideological and physical, reaching physical constraints of the world around us). In a positive sum game, I can win without someone else loosing. In a zero sum game, I can win only if someone else looses. It seems like some want to solve this problem by being delusional optimistic about the situation, creating scope out of thin air by finding new ways to capture attention and finding new things to be worried about (sexuality, identity politics, infinite lists of prior injustices). Others want to solve this by finding new frontiers through questionable means like deregulation (crypto) and space exploration. Some want to solve this through monolithic control policy where the government picks the winners and the losers based on the status quo or who was victimized the most.
Vivek's platform seems to lean towards solutions of making more of the games our society runs on positive sum instead of zero sum. This is probably the only workable policy solution but I wish someone would at least try to take a stab at build a world where we're better at coordinating a large number of actors through sharing instead of making everything a shared nothing positive sum game. A part of me thinks that there will always be zero-sum situations and the number of situations is going to continue to grow and maybe we should hedge our bets by trying to figure out what playing the zero-sum optimally looks like.
I don't understand Vivek's support of religion. Religion is a great idea in theory but I have yet to see an implementation where people do not use the religion a way to feel good about doing something without taking the time to decide for themselves whether their actions are optimal. The secular religions have room to breathe because the entrenched ones have many deeply structurally unsound problematic beliefs for the world we live in.
Interesting candidate. Overall, I get the impression that he knows how to play positive sum games better than average and plays zero sum games worse than average. A candidate with these characteristics winning seems like it will likely lead to the next president being a hard left leaning candidate. I think the optimal person for a role is one with high quality judgement who learns fast and is will rounded at executing in different contexts and I'll be watching to see whether Vivek is this person.
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