ABSTRACT
This essay is an ideological analysis of the strategies proffered by financial self-help pundit Dave Ramsey to parse his promotion of neoliberal capitalism. It is argued that Ramsey persuades by melding the bootstrap narrative, the appeal of American “givens,” and a self-presentational style that is akin to Lakoff’s “strict father” model to deliver an oversimplified message to an audience desirous of “straight talk.” Ramsey’s rhetoric supports neoliberal ideology by overlapping popular American mythologies and motifs to deliver a message of independence and virtue that is attained, quite simply, by (first) paying one’s bills and (then) amassing wealth—no matter what deleterious effects on one’s quality of life may ensue. Building wealth is a virtue and the wealthy are the virtuous. Ramsey’s persuasion is all the more effective and affective because of its rhetor’s prefabricated liminality: Ramsey affects a stance of purposiveness whereby he is and is not an intellectual, an expert, an elite and/or (especially) a mystic. Ramsey’s deliberately constructed, decentered standpoint is eerily reflective of the free-floating subject of neoliberalism. From this amorphous subject position, Ramsey is best able to plead his case and sell his products and services—via discourse that supports neoliberal ideology.
