WORLD CUP VISITORS GETTING LOST IN THE SAUCE: TSA WARNS TO LEAVE RANCH IN CHECKED BAGS

Thanks to the World Cup, social media has been flooded with visitors documenting their travels across the country. 

Fans from Japan and Sweden are speechless inside Buc-ee’s, unable to comprehend how a gas station can be larger than many supermarkets. Scots impressed by the genuine hospitality of Miami Beach and Boston. Germans driving through small-town America, where church steeples still rise above the streetscape, and locals wave at strangers as though they have known one another for years. Others marvel that nearly every U.S. building has air conditioning while much of Western Europe swelters through another summer of triple-digit heat.

Some of these posts are undoubtedly coming from influencers who understand what earns clicks. But much of the wonder is unmistakably authentic.

And perhaps the greatest compliment is what they are not talking about.

Perhaps we stopped noticing because we have lived among it for so long.

Over the coming days, there will be fireworks bursting over town squares, bands marching down main streets, families gathering for backyard cookouts, and children waving sparklers long after sunset. 

But the semiquincentennial is about far more than July 4, 1776.

As I have previously written, the story began long before the ink dried on Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words. Think Lexington and Concord in 1775 and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s immortal phrase describing “the shot heard ‘round the world.” Nor does America 250 end this week. 

The anniversaries will continue through at least 2033, when the Treaty of Paris formally ended the Revolutionary War with British recognition of U.S. independence. Walk down Rue Jacob in Paris today, and you can stand in front of the building where Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay signed that very treaty. Just a few doors away sits the four-star Hotel d’Angleterre, then serving as the British Embassy, where diplomats negotiated peace.

One could also easily argue that the semiquincentennial stretches still farther — through the constitutional convention, the ratification debates, and George Washington placing his hand upon the Bible as the first president. 

The United States was not born in an instant. She was forged through years of sacrifice, perseverance, and faith. Perhaps that is the lesson the World Cup fans have unknowingly offered us.

The America they are discovering is still here.

This summer, don’t merely celebrate America’s birthday. Rediscover it.

Take the family on a road trip. Drive the former Route 66 as it celebrates its own centennial, especially through Oklahoma, home to the longest drivable stretches of the Mother Road. 

Stand before Katharine Lee Bates’s “purple mountain majesties” at Pikes Peak, fittingly located in Colorado, which entered the Union during America’s centennial in 1876.

Head to postcard-perfect small towns such as Ludington, Michigan; Hammondsport, New York; and Sheridan, Wyoming. Enjoy a slice of pie at a family-owned diner. Visit the local historical society museum, kept alive by a handful of dedicated retirees determined to preserve their community’s story. Tour the stately county courthouse that has stood as the heart of civic life for generations.

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The America our grandparents knew has not vanished. It has simply been waiting for us to look up from our phones, turn off cable news, and find it again.

Sometimes it takes seeing our country through someone else’s eyes to remember why it has always been worth loving.

Dennis Lennox is a political commentator and public affairs consultant. Follow @dennislennox on X.