No surprise, my mom wanted to go out with a bang.
She passed away exactly one year ago—on July 4, 2025. She loved this country. So did my dad, who died a year before her. They almost lived to see America reach 250 years. No one would have celebrated harder.
My parents weren’t born here. They grew up in India, where they led lives of privilege: Mom lived in a large house, in a respected family, where everything was taken care of, while Dad came from a similar background and was well educated, a rarity back then. But they lacked something far more important: freedom. As a woman, Mom was able to earn a law degree, but she was prohibited from fulfilling her dream of becoming a judge. That was a level too high for women in India at the time.
So, in 1964, three years after their wedding, they moved to Canada, where my father accepted a doctoral scholarship at the University of British Columbia. Five years later, they relocated to the only country where they could truly realize their dreams.
My parents made their home in rural South Carolina, started a family, and worked hard to make a new life for themselves. Mom was a social studies teacher, and Dad was a college professor—but as the only Indian family in town, we faced adversity and discrimination. When my parents tried to find a home, no one would rent to them—and when they were finally able to buy a place, there were strings attached: They weren’t allowed to have alcohol; they couldn’t host black people; and they had to give the previous owner the right to buy the house back if they ever sold it.
But the hardships didn’t stop them from striving for success. They knew that America’s principles were special and true, and they devoted their lives to the American project. As a young girl, I saw the dream of entrepreneurship come alive as my mom opened a small gift shop that grew into a women’s clothing store, where I worked my first job. Their hard work, determination, and success—in the same town where they had faced adversity—inspired my work ethic and dream to make where I lived a better place. Whether we were balancing the books or eating at the dinner table, Mom and Dad reminded my siblings and me every day just how blessed we were to live in this country.
When I reflect on the values with which my parents raised me, and as we approach America’s 250th birthday on Saturday, I can’t help but think back to 100 years ago, when President Calvin Coolidge, standing before crowds in Philadelphia, gave a speech to commemorate our nation’s 150th anniversary. “It is often asserted,” he said, “that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.” But that reasoning, Coolidge continued, cannot be applied to the Declaration of Independence:
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary.
Too many people today are giving up on the principles Coolidge articulated. For the first time in recorded history, fewer than half of Americans think better days are ahead. Nearly four out of five think their children will be worse off than them. Younger generations, in particular, believe that life has never been harder than it is right now.
These are myths. It is true our country faces many serious challenges. But so has every generation, and many were a lot harder than what we face today. Think of the abolitionists who faced the evil of slavery. Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln could have said that slavery’s existence proved the country was rotten to the core, and not worth saving. But that would have been “reactionary,” to use Coolidge’s word. Instead, they fought to actualize the promises of the Declaration, ending slavery once and for all.