Inspired by my attendance at a naturalization ceremony in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, two years ago, I have been writing about America each year around Independence Day. Spending the day of America’s birth with her newest citizens, it was impossible for me not to think about my own family’s immigrant journey, and each year I pause and reflect with gratitude about our great nation.
A Shining City Upon A Hill
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July 8, 2024
On the Fourth of July this year, I decided to begin my hectic day by attending a Naturalization Ceremony on the historic grounds of Strawbery Banke Museum. It was an amazingly patriotic way to start Independence Day and included my witnessing 99 new Americans from 41 different nations renounce their prior loyalties and take an oath of allegiance to the …
Last year, in “Still a Shining City on a Hill,” I wrote about my family’s journey, in particular that of my father, who traveled from India to Africa to a little apartment in Queens to the life he built in New Jersey. This year, as America turns 250, I suspect it will not surprise readers to learn that I am as convinced as ever that the United States is still the greatest nation on Earth. Despite political headlines and polarized dogma, America is still shining. More so than ever, actually.
Still a Shining City on a Hill
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July 5, 2025
In addition to spending time with family, eating some burgers, and watching fireworks, I have always used Independence Day as a time to reflect. Specifically, I can’t help but marvel at the greatness of our country and how lucky I am to have been born here.
The concept of the shining city on a hill was popularized by Ronald Reagan, who used it throughout his political career. But it was in his farewell address to the nation on January 11, 1989 that he gave it its fullest expression:
“The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the ‘shining city upon a hill.’ The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.
I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”
Over the years, I’ve written about my immigrant roots, and the doors that were open to my family because my parents had “the will and the heart to get here.” Other times I’ve written about “people of all kinds living in harmony and peace”, and the freedoms and rights that make this the greatest country in the world. I’ve dwelt on the “tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans”, and how American military might protects us all. But today, as America celebrates its 250th birthday, it’s a different part of Reagan’s words that resonates with me. The part about “free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.”
As regular readers will know, I started a private-label frozen pizza manufacturer in 2024 and currently serve as the owner and CEO of Goodwell Foods. Running a company has given me a deep and visceral appreciation for the opportunities America provides to entrepreneurs. It’s only from my global experiences and perspective that I know that the ability to start and grow a business, creating jobs and building prosperity along the way, is not a given. In many countries, such opportunities are only given to those who descend from the powerful. America is indeed unusual.
America is also unique in its approach to immigration. As Reagan noted, “you can go live in another land — you can go to France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. You can go live in Germany, but can’t become a German. You can go live in Japan or Turkey, but you cannot become Japanese or Turkish. But anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.” This sense of belonging is an inherent part of the American entrepreneurial spirit. Reagan’s words eloquently describe America’s love of creative destruction, appreciation for innovation, and deep belief that incumbency and status are not hereditary.
It’s not just the rights and freedoms that make America a land of opportunity. It’s also the American military that safeguards and protects our liberties and freedoms. But while freedom and liberty are necessary, they are not sufficient. The secret American sauce, I’ve come to believe, is our entrepreneurial spirit. Freedoms and liberties provide the conditions under which entrepreneurship can thrive, innovations can be nurtured, and American ingenuity unleashed. It’s this combination of rights, liberties, freedoms, and entrepreneurial spirit that has made us the greatest country in the history of the world.
My father, born in what was then British India, fled to India when during the 1947 Partition when he, a Hindu, found himself on the wrong side of a line drawn on a map. As a British subject, he might have been able to opt to go to Britain; it probably would have been easier. I could have been born in the UK instead of the US, and now writing this from Hampshire in England, instead of New Hampshire in New England.
The Pursuit of Better
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June 18, 2024
While celebrating Father’s Day with my own children this past weekend, I couldn’t help but think about my own father. He’s an amazing individual who embodies the adventurous spirit and can-do attitude that drives America. He came here with little, worked hard to build financial stability, and eventually started a family. He’s never felt the need to hyph…
Without a doubt, my life would have been different. My father wouldn’t have had the chance to educate himself, become a mechanic, or own his own gas station. I likely wouldn’t have had the chance to attend Yale and MIT, teach at Harvard, and run for higher office.
Today, I am reflecting on the opportunity America gave me to start a business. To dare and dream, to take risks, and to build something that makes something. Things like that do not happen every day in Britain…or France…or many Asian or African countries. Stifling rules and regulation, a risk-averse culture in which banks generally only lend to those who don’t need to borrow, and calcified institutions strangle entrepreneurship and smother creativity.
So on America’s 250th birthday, I feel compelled to acknowledge the importance of our rights and freedoms, the resilient institutions of representative democracy, and the awesome American military that has repeatedly saved the world from darkness. But I am also thankful for a free economy and the opportunity to be an entrepreneur…to do good and do well. Because today, I am running a factory that literally sits on a hill, humming with commerce and teeming with people…driving forklifts, working machinery, and loading trucks.
American workers, making food with American ingredients, for American families, in a factory in America.
Happy birthday, America. And thank you.
VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worthprofiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World, Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.
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