Vivek Ramaswamy used AmericaFest to argue that being American is about shared ideals, not bloodlines, and he challenged both the woke left and a rising heritage-focused strain on the right with a direct, civic-centered pitch rooted in merit, the rule of law, and a Reagan-era view of assimilation.
AmericaFest turned into a fight over what conservatism should stand for after President Trump’s era, and the event highlighted a growing identity argument among conservatives. Some speakers pushed lineage and heritage as the core of American identity, while others argued for a civic definition built on shared principles.
Two clear camps emerged at the conference, one led by Michael Knowles who emphasized ancestry and a heritage connection to the nation’s founding, and another led by Vivek Ramaswamy who insisted America is defined by belief in its ideals. That divide played out both on stage and online after Ramaswamy’s op-ed and his remarks at the festival.
Ramaswamy framed his case around a kind of civic faith and opened his AmericaFest remarks by putting the conversation in those terms. He said exactly this:
“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,” Ramaswamy began. “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.”
He didn’t spare the left in his critique, arguing that identity politics reduces citizens to immutable categories and robs the country of unity. Ramaswamy also warned that a mirror image is forming on parts of the right, one that elevates bloodlines over beliefs.
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.
He called that identity-first thinking wrong, and then called out an emergent heritage argument within conservative circles as equally corrosive. Ramaswamy labeled the heritage American idea as delusional and dangerous to conservative unity.
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 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.
He hammered the practical absurdities that follow from a lineage test for patriotism, using contemporary figures as examples to show how nonsensical that thinking would be. His point was blunt: legal status, family history, or ancestry do not measure devotion to American ideals.
“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,” he continued. “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.”
For Ramaswamy, American identity ought to hinge on commitment to principles and the willingness to defend them. He spelled out a concise civic creed rooted in meritocracy, the rule of law, free speech, and accountability.
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…It means we believe in free speech and open debate, even for those who disagree with us…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.
He invoked Ronald Reagan’s take on assimilation and the idea that anyone who pledges loyalty to American ideals can become fully American. That line of thought underpins his view of the American dream as unique and binding.
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?
“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,” he concluded. “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.”
Watch the full speech here:
