Vivek Ramaswamy rarely fails to make an impression. October 11 was no different, as the Republican presidential candidate strode onto the Hogg Auditorium stage to a full house. Thunderous applause. Ramaswamy — young, energetic, and smiling — seemed to match the excitement of the students in the room. According to an email sent prior given the “overwhelming demand” for the event, Ramaswamy’s appearance was moved to the newly-renovated, high-capacity Hogg Auditorium. The event, called “The Case for Free Speech,” consisted of a talk by Ramaswamy and a Q&A session. 

For those who watched this year’s Republican presidential debates, few can forget Ramaswamy’s performance: a mixture of rapid, high-powered conservative doublespeak, a deluge of phrases, political trigger words, and absolutes. Seemingly both the most Trump-like candidate and a right-wing apparatchik, Ramaswamy, like a lightning rod, has drawn ire from those inside and outside his party. In his most excited moments, listening to Ramaswamy speak feels like staring at a giant, hot, flashing neon sign at point blank range. 

Yet the Vivek that UT students heard from was a very different political animal, not one seemingly obsessed with creating controversy for clicks, but someone with noble moral convictions undergirded by a deep sense of personal obligation. Of course, his statements were not without the characteristic urgency that Ramaswamy applies to many of his political takes. 

In Ramaswamy’s view, many Americans have chosen to surrender their speech to the societal forces that suppress our free expression of thoughts and ideas in public. This kind of culture of fear can, however, be overcome by a collective change in will, with “all of us deciding to speak our minds.” The “best measure of American democracy,” Ramaswamy told the crowd, is not the money in our bank accounts or the number of ballots cast, but “the percentage of people who feel free to say what we actually think in public.” For those of us who share unconventional opinions, then we are obligated to publicly voice those opinions. Once voiced, Ramaswamy says, you will find that someone else also had the same opinions as you, but had been too afraid to speak their mind. “Courage,” Ramaswamy says, “can be contagious.”

Crack open a copy of John Stuart Mill’s political treatise “On Liberty” and you will find a very close play-by-play of Ramaswamy’s statements on freedom of speech. In particular, the Millian concept of the “marketplace of ideas” easily describes Ramaswamy’s beliefs on the position of free speech in public. According to Mill:

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

The value of free speech, according to Mill, is that the clearest understanding of truth would emerge. This requires that speech, especially minority political views, be voiced publicly without suppression by the government or society. The principles espoused by Mill have been the controlling opinion on freedom of speech among liberal thinkers for a long time and are seen as essential to our understanding of liberal democracy and the First Amendment. Ramaswamy seems in high agreement with Mill on this matter, which is all well and good. 

For Ramaswamy’s argument, putting forth the Millian principles of free speech, seems, at least to me, to be only half of the conversation that we should be having. Today, now more than perhaps ever before in the history of mankind, individuals are free to express their views to a worldwide audience, with few inhibitions from society. In “On Liberty,” Mill didn’t see free speech as an absolute right. Rather, freedom of speech was justified because it was a useful tool that helped society progress. For Mill, to justify freedom of speech, there needs to be many individuals in society who are capable of being improved through free speech and who would use free speech to improve their own societies. 

Mill’s view that speech is only justified as a matter of utility, rather than of an inalienable natural right, is highly controversial. However, he does have a point in emphasizing the conditions that allow free speech to have the greatest utility to society. Today, those conditions seem to be missing. Though our individual voices have never had greater reach, the quality of our discourse, and its effects on the public sphere, are less than great. American political polarization is at some of the highest levels in modern history. On social media, the ability to freely express one’s views seems more important as a means of personal catharsis than a genuine attempt to convince the public of one’s moral and political convictions. 

To Ramaswamy, we say: We agree with the value of Millian free speech. What next? How do we create the conditions for freedom of speech to not only exist but thrive in American society? In particular, how can we help Americans have more of those tough, bite-the-bullet conversations over their differences in a way that is both civil and constructive? Such questions, in my opinion, are currently more urgent than the public debates over the value of free speech, which, it can reasonably be said, most Americans understand and accept, if not cherish as a cornerstone of our American way of life. 

Aside from the seeming war against freedom of speech, Mr. Ramaswamy claimed that “We’re in the middle of a kind of war” between the majority of Americans who “love our country and their founding ideals,” who believe in MLK’s creed that people should be judged “not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character,” and believe that all men are created equal. This majority is at war with a fringe minority of Americans who believe that “you’re inherently disadvantaged if you’re black,” and that “you’re inherently privileged if you’re white,” and that identity is almost entirely based on race, gender, and sexual identity.

What makes this war all the more important is that it is at a time when the beliefs of the majority have lost their prominence in American society, and Americans yearn for answers. “We are hungry for a cause, all of us, we are starved for purpose, meaning, and identity.” Americans, Ramaswamy claims, are “bound together by certain ideals” but those ideals, including “patriotism” and “faith in God,” have so much fallen by the wayside that many Americans are left with “a black hole in our hearts.” With the erosion of such values, and seemingly nothing to take their place, it is “the poison [that] fills that void.” In short, if you want a glimpse at Vivek Ramaswamy’s future America, look at the paintings of Norman Rockwell. 

As the youngest 2024 presidential candidate, Ramaswamy has emphasized his youth and tried to appeal to younger voters. However, between his youth, entrepreneurial credentials, and overwhelmingly young audience, it seems striking — strange, even — that Ramaswamy’s message on campus was so old-fashioned. Especially at t a time when most of America’s young people, those between the ages of 18 and 29, squarely reject the very values that Ramaswamy preaches. Whether Ramaswamy’s quest to reunite all Americans, through those tried-and-true principles of our political heritage, is as quixotic as it sounds should be seriously considered. 

These days, such rhetoric seems more at home in the Biden White House than it does at the Republican pulpit. Throughout his campaign and during his time in office, President Joseph Biden has put restoring the soul of America at the forefront of his political mission. Both President Biden and Ramaswamy seem to entirely agree that American identity lies in our shared belief in democracy, the principles enshrined in our founding documents, and key moments in America’s political history. Yet for President Biden, that same American identity is being challenged by the very forces that Ramaswamy supports. In a recent speech in Arizona, President Biden said: 

“This MAGA threat is the threat to the brick and mortar of our democratic institutions. But it’s also a threat to the character of our nation that gives our Constitution life, that binds us together as Americans in common cause.”  

How can President Biden and Ramaswamy share the same deep convictions on what constitutes American identity, and feel the same urgency to defend those convictions, while appearing on radically opposite sides of the political spectrum? Ramaswamy, for his part, has yet to hold President Donald Trump accountable for having challenged democratic norms, has undermined faith in America’s judicial system and attempted to excuse efforts to disrupt America’s democratic process as “peaceful.” Furthermore, he has done little to dissuade support for his candidacy from the most radical elements of the MAGA movement or called out the legitimate threat that it poses to American democracy. One can easily question this conflicting behavior, and rightfully so. 

To Ramaswamy’s credit, many Americans seem to feel that our sense of national obligation is waning and the shared aspects of our national identity are changing. Ramaswamy’s endorsement of the “God, Country, Family” ideology feels not only admirable, but entirely necessary at a time when the foundations of the American identity are at serious risk of being replaced not by some new, consensus-based, positive conception of Americanness, but a nasty, illiberal, and undemocratic strain of thinking. 

For my part, the rhetorics of Ramaswamy and President Biden are exactly what the country needs. It is through those universal, noble truths of the American experiment that America finds her bearing, and Americans our identity as one people. On Thursday, Ramaswamy characterized the United States as being in a state of “adolescence” and that, as the nation matures, we will “get through that identity crisis.” Nowhere did he mention what the likely outcome of that identity crisis would be. Will America experience a return to its founding ideals, or will America emerge with a new identity, perhaps one more resonant with the changing attitudes of the younger generation? Or, will Americans surrender to the forces of illiberalism, chaos, and prejudice? 

Whatever America’s future identity may look like, for Ramaswamy, it is not necessarily worse. “I don’t think we have to be ancient Rome,” he said, “I don’t think we have to be that nation in decline.” On this point, every American should emphatically agree.