American businessman, bestselling creator, and former U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy graced Liberty University’s Convocation stage on Wednesday to encourage college students to embrace America’s historical past, restore curiosity and self-confidence, and readopt the patriotic imaginative and prescient of our nation’s Founding Fathers.
Ramaswamy’s visit comes simply 33 days earlier than the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, a race through which, at 37 years outdated, he turned the youngest Republican to ever run for the nation’s highest workplace. His enthusiastic speech at Convocation acquired a number of ovations as he urged college students to revive America’s founding ideas.
“When our nation was born in 1776, we were a nation of underdogs,” he mentioned. “We were a nation of insurgence. Our Founding Fathers stood up to the most powerful empire in the world, declared their independence, and then somehow turned assertion into reality. … In order to make America great again, we have to know the story of what made America great the first time around. That’s the story of our nation, that’s the story of our history, and it’s a story that we’ve forgotten.”
Ramaswamy argued that these values have shifted as a result of posterity has ignored the struggles of America’s previous. Today’s era enjoys unparalleled freedoms with out dealing with the arduous battles that secured freedom’s place in our nation.
“There was something in the (Founding Fathers’) culture that’s different from what we have today. It was a culture that valued education,” he mentioned. “As Americans, we should be inspired to stay true to that founding culture of exploration and curiosity. … Can we sustain that special combination of curiosity and confidence? That, I believe, is the defining question of our era. And it actually starts with all of you — the next generation of Americans.”
To domesticate an surroundings that prioritizes curiosity, schooling, and confidence, Ramaswamy inspired college students to depart their consolation zones whereas in faculty and be part of a membership, take electives unrelated to their diploma plans, study an instrument, and serve.
“Do not make your own identity a product of your occupation,” he mentioned. “You are so much bigger than the thing you happen to be doing at any one given time. And there is no better time to cultivate that sense of adventure and curiosity than right here at your experience in college.”
In his closing remarks, Ramaswamy reminded college students to embrace the beliefs of previous generations. He mentioned America’s exceptionalism hinges on our potential to keep in mind why our Founding Fathers deserted consolation to innovate the biggest social experiment the world has ever seen: making a free nation.
He emphasised talking the fact with conviction and respect, preventing for conservative points like the gender binary, securing nationwide borders, defending the nuclear household, strengthening capitalism to elevate others from poverty, and embracing the U.S. Constitution as the strongest and biggest supporter of freedom.
“We fight for the truth. We stand up for the truth,” he mentioned. “That is what won us the American Revolution. That is what reunited us after the Civil War. That is what won us two world wars and the Cold War. That is what still gives hope to the free world. And if we can revive that dream over group identity, victimhood, and grievance, then nobody in the world … is going to defeat us. That is what American exceptionalism is all about, and that is what we will revive to save this great nation.”
Before operating for president, Ramaswamy led a profitable profession in enterprise by beginning a hedge fund, two know-how corporations, an asset administration agency, and writing books. His most up-to-date e-book is “Truths: The Future of America First.”
