Vivek Ramaswamy's Patriotic Speech at Amefest

So Charlie Kirk said this. We traveled the country last year. He said, the answer to lies is not censorship. It is truth spoken with courage. Are you guys ready for some truth tonight? Let's talk truth. I'll tell you about a private conversation that Charlie and I had about a year ago. It was in October of 2024, in the lead up to the presidential election. We had a double header that night. We started at Georgia State with one of the prove me wrong events. And then we had a turning point event at UNC, and we traveled and we flew together and we had one of our deepest conversations. It was about faith. It was about theology. We went broad and Charlie is such a curious guy. But the thing I asked him is, how do you define faith, Charlie? And he didn't miss a beat. He's really good at this. He said that faith is about believing something that you cannot see.  He said. We've fallen subject to this culture of empiricism and rationalism, that in this moment in America we say, I have to believe it to see it. But sometimes you have to believe it to see it. I have to see it to believe its usual culture. Charlie said, no, no, no. Having faith means I actually have to believe it to see it. We're going to talk about faith tonight. Not so much faith in God or in religion, but faith in our country, a civic  faith, a faith in the United States of America.

And to understand and reviving our faith in America, we have to understand who we really are as Americans. That is the question of our time. What does it mean to be an American in the year 2026? There are three competing visions right now in the country, and it's worth seeing them for what they are. The first two are wrong, and in my view, the third one is unambiguously correct. The first of those visions comes from the woke left. The woke left says your identity is based on your race, your gender, your sexuality, your genetics. That if you're black, you're a woman or you're a sexual minority, you're somehow oppressed. If you're a white male who's straight, you're privileged. And by the way, that your race and your gender and your sexuality determine who you are and what you can believe in life. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of the squad famously said, we don't want any more black faces that don't want to be a black voice. We don't want any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice. Think about that. You're raising your gender. Define who you are. Ibram Kendi famously said, the remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. And if you disagree with that view, for the last 4 or 5 years in this country, they labeled you a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, a transphobe, which created a new culture of fear in our country that spread like an epidemic, a fear that replaced our culture of free speech in the United States of America.

And that was un-American. And we defeated that woke left at the ballot box last year when we sent Donald Trump back to the white House in November of 2024, thanks to the efforts of Charlie Kirk, perhaps more than anybody else in this country. So that's the woke left's vision, and they get it wrong. Now, when I left my career as a biotech CEO and I was talking to people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street about this, that took courage. I'm going to admit, it doesn't take that much courage for me to come here and tell you all about criticizing the woke left. Now let me get to the harder part. There's a different vision of American identity that's emergent in certain corridors of the online. Right. And it says that your identity as an American is based on your lineage, that how long you have been in the country, your lineage and your genetics tied to the blood and soil of the country, determines how American you are. It is the idea of a heritage American that says the truest form of an American is somebody who is a descendant of the American Revolution [00:04:00:00] period or before. And I will tell you this idea of the heritage American. We ought to have this discussion. It's becoming more popular. I think the idea of a heritage American is about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up.

There is no American who is more American than somebody else. The American quality. It's not like the left. They believe in this non-binary stuff. There's no non-binary American. It is binary. Either you're an American or you're not. And you think about it. I can prove this to you. Thank you. I'll take some applause on that. If you really believe in this idea, think about where it leads you. Leads you to believe that Donald Trump is less of an American than Joe Biden because Donald Trump's mother was an immigrant and his grandfather was an immigrant. That doesn't make any sense. Leads you to believe that somehow Bernie Sanders is more of an American than Senator Bernie Moreno from my home state and America First Patriot, because Bernie Moreno was a naturalized citizen from Colombia. It makes you think that Marco Rubio, our great secretary of state, is somehow less of an American than Elizabeth Warren because she's a Native American, which we all know. Right? Doesn't make any sense. Is loony. It's crazy talk. It makes you believe that somehow I am less of an American than the transgender criminal who assassinated Charlie Kirk. We refuse to accept that the [00:05:30:00] idea that a heritage American is any more American than another American is un-American at its core. And I will fight to the very end for that, because that's what it means to be an American.

We believe in ideals. That is who we are. What does it mean to be an American in the year 2026? It means we believe in those ideals of 1776. It means we believe in merit, that the best person gets the job regardless of their skin color, that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions. It means we believe in the rule of law. And I say this as the proud son of legal immigrants to this country. That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And that is why we have sealed the southern border. And we will not apologize for it, because a nation without borders is not a nation. What does it mean to be American? It means we believe in free speech and open debate,  even for those who disagree with us. From Nick Fuentes to Jimmy Kimmel, you get to speak your mind in the open without the government censoring you. It means you go to a college campus. You speak without fear that words are not violence, that violence is violence, and violence is never an acceptable response to words. That, too, is what it means to be a citizen of this country who believes in free speech in America. It's not just our constitutional principles. It also means that we believe in the culture that was born of those principles. It means we believe in accountability, that we're brave, that were courageous, even heroic when called upon to do what is right for our country in our hour of need.

It means that as Americans, we take risks. Sometimes we fail, but we pick ourselves up and we take those risks again, that we encounter hardship from time to time. But hardship is not the same thing as victimhood. It means that we are ambitious, that we're curious about landing on the moon to Mars, curious about the world around us as our founding fathers were still believing that it is our manifest destiny to lead it, and our duty to die for that country if we are called to do so. That is what it means to be a citizen of this country. There are those who are skeptical of this vision of America, those who are skeptical of the American Dream, especially young people. And I hear you on that. We'll come to that in a second. But I would rather live in a country that has those ideals and falls short [00:08:00:00] of them, than to live in a country with no ideals at all. See, the left has preached to us for a long time that our diversity is our strength. No, sorry. Our diversity is not our strength. The online comment threads of Twitter might preach that our lineage is our strength. No, I'm sorry. Our lineage is not our strength. Our true strength is what unites us across that diversity and through that lineage. That is what makes this country more distinctive than any other country on planet Earth.

It is what makes American exceptionalism possible. And Ronald Reagan understood this. He famously said, you know, you could go to Italy, but you would never be an Italian. You could move to Germany, but you would never be a German. You could pack your bags and live the rest of your life in China or Japan. You would never be Chinese or Japanese, but you can come from any one of those countries to the United States of America, and you can still be an American, so long as you pledge allegiance to the ideals in that flag. So long as you work hard, you play by the rules. You make your contributions obtain your citizenship. You are every bit an American. As somebody who descended from the Mayflower, it is called the American Dream for a reason. There is no Canadian dream. There is no British dream. It sounds kind of goofy to say it. There's no Chinese dream, okay? It is the American dream that makes American exceptionalism possible. And the answer of what it means to be a conservative. This is what it's up to us to answer. It is a fork in the road for the future of the conservative movement right now. What does it mean to be a conservative? It means we conserve those ideals that define our country. And now is a moment, a time for choosing in the future of our conservative movement to determine with clarity who's actually on that team of conserving the ideals versus who actually is not.

If you believe that boys should compete with girls in girls sports. I'm sorry you're not on the team. You have no place in this movement. If you believe. Thank you. It's pretty. Pretty obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway. If you believe in racial quotas in government hiring, you have no place in the conservative movement. Sorry, you're not on the team. You're free to believe it. It's a free country, but you have no place in the conservative movement. If you believe in normalizing hatred towards any ethnic group, toward whites, towards blacks, towards Hispanics, towards Jews, towards Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement, period. And I will not apologize for that. I will not hedge when I say it. If you believe, and you will forgive me for giving you an exact quote from our online commentator, Nick Fuentes. If you believe that Hitler was pretty fucking cool, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. You can debate foreign aid to Israel all you want. That's fine. That's fair. But you have no place with that level of hatred, you could debate the right resolution of  the Russia Ukraine war. But if you believe Joseph Stalin is someone to look up to, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. If you call Usha Vance, the Second Lady of the United States of America a geat.

You have no place in the future of the conservative movement. And if you can't say those things without stuttering, then you have no place as a leader at any level in the conservative movement either. Certainly not in my state of Ohio. Now. Does this mean those who have espoused these views or even said these things are bad people because it's easy to come here and denounce the woke left? That part is super easy. Coming up here and denouncing a bunch of groypers in the conservative movement a little bit harder. But in the scheme of things, I could care less. Pretty easy for me. The hard part. The hard part is asking the question of where do we go from here? This is what our country actually requires. This is what true leadership demands. And we ask the question, are these bad people for saying these things? And I think the answer to that question, I think I'm going to tell you something that both Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson ought to be able to agree on. I think they will. Are these bad people? I think the answer to that question is no, because there's no such thing as an inherently bad person. Actually. See, the Christian faith that Charlie espoused teaches us that every one of us, every one of you, is made in the image of God. My Hindu faith teaches us that God and His divinity resides in each of us, that we're truly equal in the most moral sense.

There is no such thing as inherently bad person. There's only ever an inherently good person that exists. But sometimes good people do and say bad things. They believe they're doing the right thing, but they're still doing the wrong thing. And the job of a true leader is to understand why and then to step up and actually fix it. And the issue in our country right now. All jokes aside, is that we are in the middle. All of this, everything we've just talked about, from the woke left to the right, these are symptoms of a generational crisis of purpose and meaning in our country. Depression, anxiety, addiction higher than we've ever seen in American history. In your generation, in Gen Z, economic insecurity, which I understand feeling like you work hard, not quite getting ahead. Homeownership out of reach for a 30 year old, took on that four year college debt and degree. But without being able to get that right, job has created economic angst. You combine that with the failures of an educational system that are failing our youth day to day, when 75% of eighth graders are not proficient in math and 70% of them aren't proficient in reading something that makes the left upset when I say it because they think that's racist, and something that makes some of my friends on the right upset because they take it as a personal insult. The truth is, years of woke indoctrination and victimhood psychology in our schools.

We were complaining about it not because we were culture warriors alone, but because that has consequences. So we have to fix it. And it's up to us to do this now. And I mean this message as bitter medicine for everyone in my shoes. Leadership in the Republican Party, myself included, to swallow. Now, we can't blame the Democrats anymore. Truth is, we won the election last year. We control all three branches of the federal government. In my home state, we control all three branches of the state government. If we don't get this right now, we have nobody left to blame but ourselves. That is on us. That is the standard you hold us to. And if I fail? If we fail, vote us the heck out of office. That is the fate we deserve. So that's on us now. No more just, you know, cable news, screaming about Schumer shutdowns or whatever it is, right? I just it bores me. It doesn't matter. It's up to us. We have a chance to lead with our own vision. Blaming the Democrats isn't enough. That's on us. But I also have an ask  in closing of each of you here tonight, especially Gen Z, especially the next generation of young conservatives who I believe are actually going to save this country. Do not repeat the mistakes of the woke left. The number one mistake of the woke left. I will ask you. I will implore you not to repeat as young conservatives is, don't be a victim.

The number one factor. Thank you. Victimhood culture from the left or the right will be the ruin of this country. The number one factor. Not the only factor, but the number one factor that determines whether each and every one of you achieves your goals in life is actually you. That's the truth. John F Kennedy famously said it. I think we should heed his words. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. And the first step today is to ask, what can you actually do for yourself? So you're not dependent on your government, so you're not dependent on the generation that came before you. That's not too much to ask, because we are still the greatest country known to the history of mankind. This is the greatest country planet Earth has ever known. And that American dream that defines us is real. I know it's real because I have lived that American dream. I know so many in Gen Z are skeptical of it. I know so many of you feel like you have to see it to believe it. But I will ask you in closing, as Charlie Kirk taught me, sometimes you have to believe it to see it. That is what faith in our country is all about. Thank you all guys. God bless you and your families and may God bless our United States of America.