The former presidential candidate has some interesting and some wildly off-base arguments about how to inspire greatness.

Like many normal people, I was off Twitter/X for much of the period surrounding Christmas. But according to an X post Vivek Ramaswamy issued during a Yuletide intra-MAGA immigration brouhaha, “normalcy” is something we have too much of in America today — and it’s hurting us. Since I missed this particular social media moment, and such moments are inherently ephemeral, it didn’t seem necessary to weigh in. But since comments Ramaswamy and others in this debate became a topic of conversation on the first episode of The Editors this week, I thought it worth clarifying what Ramaswamy got right and what he got quite wrong.

Ramaswamy laid out his full argument on X. The essence is that “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.” He treats normalcy and mediocrity as synonyms. Thus, “if you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” which “doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent.” We need “a culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.”

Some cultural messages have likely helped foster laziness and have failed to inculcate grit among some substantial number of young people. Ramaswamy cited the prominence and veneration of slacker archetypes in media from his childhood, such as Saved by the Bell and Boy Meets World — media he says immigrant families intentionally kept from their children, lest they be corrupted into slackerdom. On The Editors, Jim Geraghty similarly invoked “effort shock” arising from the disparity between how quickly figures such as Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) in The Karate Kid become skilled at some task (you’re gonna need a montage) and how long it takes in real life. Yet also I wonder whether, in the years since, the nerds have finally had their revenge. Consider the cinematic domination (until recently) of comic-book movies, the economic and cultural influence of Silicon Valley, and the decidedly nerd-friendly digitization of society.

Some of Ramaswamy’s other targets are less justifiable. If our culture celebrates “the jock over the valedictorian,” then we “will not produce the best engineers,” he argued. As a valedictorian (full disclosure: of my high school, though several years earlier), Ramaswamy could be accused of making a self-interested argument here. Though it’s one his own bio, with which he made sure we all became acquainted during his 2024 presidential campaign, undercuts: He played tennis in high school, making him a jock, something he enjoys emphasizing when it benefits him.

There may be a dumb-jock stereotype, but there needn’t be an “either-or” choice between physical fitness and intellectual accomplishment. I have met plenty of people in my time — including many attendees of the alma mater I share with Ramaswamy — who defy this supposed binary. Millions of kids have been roused from laziness and mediocrity and have learned about hard work and excellence (and more) from sports. And lest I also be accused of making a self-interested argument, consider figures, such as astronauts, who combine brains and brawn, and where we would be without them. Anima sana in corpore sano is a worthy aspiration.

In other aspects of his diagnosis, Ramaswamy is just straight-up wrong. He asserted that American kids are frittering away their futures with recreational, social idleness. We need: “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.'” Good news for him: American kids are “hanging out” less. From 2003 to 2022, the amount of time U.S. teenagers spent socializing face-to-face dropped by 45 percent; 15- to 19-year-olds reduced their time hanging out by more than three hours a week.

The result, however, has not been some Ramaswamian utopia, as the very fact of his criticizing American culture at this time reveals. These lonely kids are spending — and wasting — more time online and using apps, and less time in the physical world doing things like getting driver’s licenses. These kids are more depressed and, as Jim noted, likelier to commit suicide. If these kids are less likely to become involved in a pregnancy, it’s because they’re increasingly not interacting romantically with the opposite sex at all. Today’s young people are ever more likely to evidence what Yuval Levin described as the “pathologies of passivity,” the result of “a failure to launch, which leaves too many Americans on the sidelines of life, unwilling or unable to jump in.” It all outwardly appears like a kind of “nerdiness,” but it’s ever more common. Ramaswamy’s diagnosis appears woefully ignorant of this contemporary reality.

But even if every American youth were withdrawing from social life and taking Ramaswamy’s advice, something would still be amiss. There is no doubt that checking every box, filling every spare moment with accomplishment, and climbing every rung of every ladder you encounter can set you up for a certain kind of success. It has done so for Ramaswamy and others. They shall have their reward. Yet to enforce this mindset universally, and rigidly, risks creating successive cohorts of overly credentialed hoop-jumping résumé robots, the sort of people who end up successful at McKinsey but don’t know how to lead fulfilled lives, and may end up destroying others. The ranks of today’s progressives are filled with such people. Do we really want more?

For the already consultant-minded, there’s a utilitarian argument for not shunting everyone onto the meritocracy’s systematic conveyor belt. Ramaswamy’s inciting concern was international competition, especially against China. But China, as a top-down, totalitarian society, already excels — has long excelled — at producing enthusiastic maximizers of whatever a given set of parameters happens to be. The problem with desiring an American equivalent is that this country will retain its competitive edge in the way it always has: by breaking parameters and establishing new ones. But as River Page wrote in an excellent essay for the Free Press, “a culture that values getting a degree from an Ivy League establishment is not conducive to the sort of risk required to create anything unique.” Successful people obviously do come out of Ivy League institutions. Yet the kinds of innovation and leadership America needs will inevitably run up against the establishment atop which the Ivies sit.

There are real problems with American culture. And there are merits to parts of Ramaswamy’s argument, even if on the whole it inclines one to agree with Jim that “Ramaswamy is bringing a lot of baggage to this discussion.” But we won’t solve these problems by disdaining possible sources of virtue, by misapprehending contemporary social realities, and by mechanistically funneling more and more people toward preset pathways of supposed success. If thinking that makes me “normal,” so be it. But at least I wasn’t spending Christmastime arguing with people online.