August 24, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Campaign Slogan Is a Reverse “In This House, We Believe” Yard Sign

Mother Jones illustration; Win McNamee/Getty; Kirby Lee/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In his closing statement at last night’s GOP presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy rattled off a list of his “10 campaign commandments”:

  1. God is real.
  2. There are two genders.
  3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
  4. Reverse racism is racism.
  5. An open border is no border.
  6. Parents determine the education of their children.
  7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.
  8. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty.
  9. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.
  10. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

Sound familiar?

It appears, at least to me, that Ramaswamy decided to proclaim the opposite of each of the statements that are displayed on the most common “In This House, We Believe” yard signs commonly found in Democratic neighborhoods. “I just wrote down things that are true,” Ramaswamy told the Atlantic. “It took me about 15 minutes.” Maybe. But I’m convinced that this was a deliberate mockery. (I tried calling Ramaswamy’s press secretary for comment, but her voicemail was full.)

Some of these are stretches, but bear with me. In Ramaswamy’s world, “Science is real” becomes “God is real.” Commandment number 4 is the inverse of “Black Lives Matter”; number 5 is the response to “No human is illegal”; the supremacy of the nuclear family counters “Love is love”; “There are two genders” responds to “women’s rights are human rights”; “Human flourishing requires fossil fuels” answers “Water is life”; and the Constitution’s protection of freedoms negates the assertion that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Commandments 6, 8, and 9 round out the list to a healthy 10.

Even if they don’t all fit perfectly, the overall tone matches too well to be a coincidence, right?

Kirby Lee/AP

The Biblical bent of Ramaswamy’s commandments is interesting, given that he is a monotheistic Hindu attempting to court Christian voters. But Ramaswamy’s make him seem less like Moses than like a suburban homeowner—and no less cringe. 

For ease, here are the two lists beside one another, lined up to show the pairings:

We Believe poster: Science is real. Ramaswamy commandment: God is real. 

 We Believe poster: Black Lives Matter. Ramaswamy commandment: Reverse racism is racism.

We Believe poster: No human is illegal. Ramaswamy commandment: An open border is no border. 

We Believe poster: Water is life. Ramaswamy commandment: Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.

We Believe poster: Women’s rights are human rights. Ramaswamy commandment: There are two genders.

We Believe poster: Love is love. Ramaswamy commandment: The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. 

We Believe poster: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Ramaswamy commandment: The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate