Globalism - The Modern Tower of Babel

Vivek Ramaswamy recently wrote a Tweet that presents the most fundamentally flawed vision of what American citizenship and national identity means. It prioritizes global economic competition over the birthright of the American people and it concerns me that a sizable number of my fellow countrymen would even try to defend him for it. In this post, I will clearly convey why anyone who would defend this viewpoint does not belong anywhere near even the borders of this nation let alone a position of power within it. Here is the Tweet if you have not read it:

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.

Why Does it Matter?

This topic matters because we have reached the point where not a single person can define what a citizen is. The entire country is in disarray and chaos due to not viewing each other as a part of an extended family. Nobody seems to want to discuss this topic because yes, it is a hard topic to discuss. It draws lines where people don't want to draw lines because it can be uncomfortable and those who are on one side of it are likely to view the other side as hateful or intolerant. That is precisely why this topic must be discussed. Those lines we want to avoid are built deeply into our genetics as human beings and are part of our design by God. Humans were not meant to come together as one gigantic monolith of indistinguishable people to try and make the wealthiest economic zone on earth. Humans are meant to love and respect each other while maintaining borders of nationality, ethnicity, and culture. The same way families within a nation love and respect each other despite remaining distinct and prioritizing their own. A strong, distinctly united family can most effectively provide for the local Church. A strong, distinctly united Church can most effectively provide for the local community. A strong, distinctly united local community can most effectively provide for the state. A strong, distinctly united state can most effectively provide for the nation. A strong, distinctly united nation can most effectively provide for the world. Break, disrupt, or redefine any of these links of the chain and you have disrupted the designed order for how Christians best serve others as fallen humans.

I am making these distinctions because I love people. I love different cultures and I find them absolutely beautiful. The only way these cultures can remain beautiful is by self-segregating to a degree. This is not a form of hateful separation or thinking less of anyone else, it is about preserving what makes us unique while setting us all up for success by letting each other prioritize and build up their own people until a healthy surplus can overflow into help for outsiders the same way a wealthy family can help provide to others in the local Church. God did say that there is no man nor woman, Jew nor Greek, but that is not to mean that men and women are to be made into the exact same thing or that Jews and Greeks were to be made into nonexistent categories. This meant that we are spiritually united in Christ as the Church. We are the Body. Just as each individual within a local Church is a different part of the Body being a hand, foot, arm, or leg, so is each race of men. We cannot be an effective body if we all demand to be the hand or all demand to be the foot together. This is where the progressives are correct, diversity is beautiful and it absolutely is a strength. Satan has taken that correct and truthful view as he always does and made it into a falsehood by blinding them to the inherent contradiction that intermixing every single person into a giant conglomerate is no different than mixing all the colors of paint on your palette into one disgusting color. What God intended to be a beautiful palette of paint making up all distinct colors in a beautiful painting, they have made into one singular mixture that can no longer be used to make anything beautiful.

My goal with this post is to explain why a distinct definition of a citizen is required for social cohesion and fulfills the best of what God meant for humanity from a logical, theological, and ontological point of view. We Christians are all citizens of God's Kingdom and prioritize each other within the Church. Does this mean that we hate those who are not elect? We are all members of our own family, does that mean we do not love anyone who is outside of our blood relatives? This is a conversation of priority, not hate. If your brain automatically triggers into "wow this is racist or hateful" while reading any portion of this post, I implore you to dig deeper into what could have possibly programmed your brain into automatically thinking so lowly about someone who is defending a universally held traditional belief of all humans and even all Christians for the past 2000 years up until around 40-60 years ago. Were all Christians just hateful bigots not living up to Christian ideals until the staunchly anti-religious, recent Enlightenment movement corrected the Church's universal interpretation?

Citizenship is an Inheritance, Not a Resume Item

Is a nation a group of random people from around the world working on a math problem together and solving engineering problems for money or is it an extended family? Citizenship is not merely about competence, knowledge of history, or economic value. It is about blood and soil, the inheritance of a national legacy handed down by the ancestors that fought for, built, and founded the nation. This is the fundamental definition of a citizen that the entire world including America itself has accepted since the very beginning of human history. The very word itself "nation" shares its same Latin root "nat" with the word "natal". This is why it derives from the Old French "nacion" meaning "birth, rank, descendants, relatives, country, homeland" which derives from the latin "natio" meaning "birth, origin, breed, stock, kind, species, race of people, or tribe". The Latin word "natio" also is from the Latin verb "nasci" meaning "to be born". It is impossible to detach a nation from its people, despite what people claim in the modern time.

I don't even think the people who have fallen victim to the propaganda trying to subvert Western European nations into believing they uniquely must be made into international economic zones rather than homelands for a tribe of people. Just ask anyone with any political view, any religion, or any moral framework whether it would be acceptable for me to walk into India after having read the Bhagavad Gita and then lecture racial indians on how I am more of an Indian than they are because I know their history and culture better on an intellectual level. Not just that, but then imagine I proceed to demand they recognize me as a citizen and tell them they are stupid and lazy and how they should import tons of white Americans like myself to pick up their slack for them because "India is a set of ideas". Not a single person would be remotely okay with me doing such a thing, nor should they be. Now what pervasive and slimy propaganda could have possibly subverted many Americans into believing that our country should be held to any kind of different standard at all? As I said earlier, the view I am arguing for has been and still is universally held by the grand majority of all humans and even all Christians on planet earth for the last 2000 years or more outside of specifically America circa. 40-60 years ago.

Just replace the following quote from Vivek with me in India in that same example. Would that not make anyone laugh? Me, a white American who is intelligent and informed on the Indian culture, history, and religious views daring to condescendingly lecture actual Indians in India while saying "we want to return to"? As if I could possibly have some nostalgic view for what India once was or some kind of relation to the Indian people in any way?

When our Founding Fathers fought and died to settle the land, build this society, and establish this nation, they did so with a clear vision: to create a homeland for their descendants–not to create an economic zone to be handed over to the highest bidder or most technically skilled foreigner. This could not be clearer and it is disgusting that people would dare invoke the Founding Fathers of America while arguing for the opposing view. John Jay wrote the following in his Federalist 2:

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice, that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence. This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties.

I see absolutely no reason to believe that the Founders had any other vision for America than to be a strong, majority-European colony that is free to practice various Christian denominations without the State enforcing one particular Christian church as being the One True Church. If you disagree with this direction or definition for the United States, you have zero claim to the Founders and it would be more intellectually honest for you to simply argue something along the lines of "We are different now. The Founders were racist and we disagree with them so here is why I believe we need to define America as a multiracial, nonreligious global democracy." I would have much more respect for someone who was willing to advocate for that view which is why I have more respect for the Democrats at this point than I do the Republicans on this topic.

Citizenship is an Extended Family, Not an Idea

Imagine being disowned by your family for not making enough money or not being smart enough. Even worse yet, imagine your own father adopting a foreign child specifically because he was smarter than you and claiming he is more of a son than you will ever be and deserves your inheritance more. Likewise, imagine being replaced by foreign stock in your own ancestor's nation due to being deemed not smart enough or productive enough. Countries will have smart people and stupid people alike. Just like your family will have smart and stupid people. They are still family and still have more of a right to your unconditional love and prioritization than some random person from outside no matter how unfair that sounds. Everyone knows it to be a true fact regardless of how it sounds when applied to a nation. Think of how the mentally ill on the streets today are treated compared to how "the town drunk" would have been treated 150 years ago. Everyone would have known the town drunk on a first-name basis and likely helped him out and talked to him regularly. He would have been treated the way a lowlife member of family would be treated nowadays. Pitied and slightly rejected to a degree maybe, yes, but loved greatly nonetheless.

This is how the citizens of a nation should be treated by the state and its fellow countrymen. No matter how undeserving they may seem on a level of merit, they still are owed the inheritance of their forefathers more than someone who comes from the outside and demands it. Vivek seems to want to point to technical skill as what makes you worthy of citizenship. Unfortunately for him, a nation is not just a corporation or an academic competition. Our ancestors didn't fight and die on countless battlefields just so foreign technocrats can claim our birthright based on their STEM degrees. He presents a false choice: either accept foreign replacement of American workers or fall behind China. This completely ignores the third option: investing in our own people, the rightful heirs to this nation, while protecting their inheritance from being claimed by outsiders that think they're better than us because they don't watch Saturday morning cartoons, hang out at the mall, have sleepovers, or chill watching movies with each other. The truth of the matter is, America built all of this with a culture that allows our people to enjoy life without idolizing degrees, study, and credentials. We still made a better society and culture here with the best technological advancements while being able to enjoy games and entertainment together. I would argue the problem with stagnating innovation is people feeling like there isn't any extended family to invest into the way our forefathers had. Why would blood-born Americans be driven and passionate about growing the infrastructure and well-being of the nation at great personal cost if all of it will be handed over to people that have zero claim to it? The issue isn't whether Americans can compete globally in STEM fields. The issue is whether Americans should have to compete for their own birthright against foreigners who have no ancestral claim to American citizenship and prosperity.

Love the Sojourner

Let's wrap this up by focusing on what we do about people who do not fall into the category of citizen. God commands us to love the sojourner, but what exactly constitutes someone in this category? The word "sojourner" is often used to translate the Hebrew word gēr, which refers to someone who lives in a community that is not primarily their own. For someone to fall into this category, they must:

• Acknowledge this non-citizen status
• Agree to follow all laws of the land

A sojourner who believes themselves identical in status to a citizen and entitled to the same exact rights is no longer a sojourner. Such a person could be considered a thief at best or an invader at worst, and there is zero obligation to allow them to reside within your borders. The gēr had a second-class status that was lower priority than a citizen, yet they were still strongly protected. The West has excelled so much at loving the sojourner that we have forgotten there is any such thing as a second-class category for people living within the country. How can we provide for the sojourner if our own people are left out to dry? As I said earlier: "Why would blood-born Americans be driven and passionate about growing the infrastructure and well-being of the nation at great personal cost if all of it will be handed over to people that have zero claim to it?" Forcing the majority of people in the nation to enslave themselves to the whims of guests that should be grateful to even be allowed to stay within the borders is bound to make them hostile towards the guests. It is also allowing said guests to be hostile and entitled by giving them entitlements to begin with. There has to be order and control and there is nothing unloving about that. Yes, you will be second priority while still being treated with respect and allowed to stay, if you are unhappy with that result, then you may return to your home and contribute towards making that place a better place to live.