Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy says he is on a mission with his 2024 presidential campaign – to help the country rediscover its national identity and go back to America’s uniting founding principles.
"We are in the middle of this national identity crisis where we have celebrated our diversity and our differences for so long that we forgot all of the ways we're really just the same as Americans, bound by a common set of ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago," he told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday.
Ramaswamy made his official announcement that he was entering the 2024 presidential race Tuesday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight." The Strive Asset Management co-founder told Carlson that affirmative action has been a "national cancer" which must be replaced with merit in "every sphere" of American life.
"I am running for United States president to revive...those basic rules of the road: meritocracy, the idea that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character," he said.
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Ramaswamy called out policies such as one created by former President Lyndon Johnson which require America’s business partners to adopt a race-based quota system and explained why it is so important for the country to reward merit.
"Merit in who gets into this country, let's start with that," he said. "I think more people like my parents can be a good thing for this country. But the people whose first act of entering this country is a law-breaking one, we should say a hard no to that, not just who gets in, but also who gets ahead."
The left’s "woke religion" through affirmative action and climate change are "shackling" the country’s economy and culture, he argued.
"We need to take the most sacred cows of these alternative secular religions, and I'm sorry to say this, take them to the slaughterhouse, because that's what it's going to take for this national revival where we stop apologizing for what it means to be American," Ramaswamy said.
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The presidential candidate explained part of rediscovering America’s national identity means cutting dependence on China and using the military to protect U.S. interests. Ultimately, he expressed going back to America's ideals will bring the country together.
"If we want to deliver a solution, we're going to need to rediscover that national identity that we all share and if we do that, I still think honest, deep in my bones, that our best days, not in some cheesy politician kind of way, but actually, truly, I think our best days can be ahead of us," he said. "But it's going to take that revival to make it happen."
