As America approaches its 250th anniversary, I keep returning to something the World Cup revealed about us. It wasn’t the matches or the scoreboards. It was the way foreign visitors reacted to this country — our openness, our patriotism, our strange mix of confidence and humility. There is something clarifying about seeing America reflected back through the eyes of people who arrive here without a script. Tocqueville understood that. He saw truths about us that we sometimes miss because we’re too close to them.
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I felt that same sensation reading the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ new report, “.” The report centers the experiences of displaced children around the world — children who have endured war, hunger and the loss of home. Their voices, like those World Cup visitors, remind us who we are and what we stand for.
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America has been a leader in the global commitment to human rights
The numbers alone are staggering. Nearly 118 million people are forcibly displaced today, and children make up almost 40% of them. In Sudan, five million children have been uprooted by conflict. In Haiti, hundreds of thousands of children are displaced amid spiraling violence. In Ukraine, one in three children can no longer attend school in person because their classrooms have been destroyed.
But the report does something more important than reciting statistics. It lets these children speak. Their drawings, poems and testimonies cut through the abstractions of geopolitics. One Sudanese girl, Sara, writes of her homeland as a “land of peace,” even as war tears it apart. Her words are not naïve. They are a declaration of what she believes her country can be. In that sense, she is not so different from the men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1776 and wrote down their own audacious hopes for the future.
As we commemorate America 250, it is worth remembering that the modern global commitment to human rights did not appear by accident. After the Second World War, the United States helped build the framework that still protects the vulnerable today: the , the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the institutions that helped nations emerge from tyranny. Much of the world’s understanding of liberty, dignity and the rule of law traces back — directly or indirectly — to the American experiment.
But leadership is not a birthright. It must be renewed.
Today, global displacement is at record levels. Humanitarian funding is shrinking. Conflicts are multiplying. Children are paying the price. In Sudan, eight million children are out of school. In Lebanon, hundreds of thousands are experiencing acute psychological distress. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, four million children have been displaced by decades of violence. These crises demand more than sympathy. They demand clarity about who we are.
The USCRI report makes one point unmistakably clear: displaced children are not passive recipients of aid. They are rights-holders. They are leaders. They are agents of change. And they are watching to see whether the United States still believes in the ideals we once championed.
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What World Cup visitors reminded us about America
This is where the World Cup comes back into view. Visitors were struck by our patriotism, our friendliness, our belief in liberty — not as slogans, but as lived habits. They saw something we sometimes forget: that America’s strength has always come from the conviction that freedom is not a privilege for the few, but a promise for all.
If liberty is God-given, it is not meant for Americans alone.
America’s greatest contributions to the world have come when we have chosen engagement over indifference. When we have stood with the oppressed rather than turned inward. When we have recognized that our own freedom is strengthened — not weakened — when we defend the freedom of others.
As we celebrate America 250, we should remember that patriotism is not simply pride in our past. It is responsibility for our future. It is the willingness to look honestly at the world as it is and to act in accordance with the principles we claim to cherish.
So what can we do?
What we can do to put patriotism into action
We can start by listening. Read the Let the voices of these children unsettle you a bit. Let them remind you of the stakes. Support the organizations doing the work on the ground. Welcome newcomers into our communities. Attend a naturalization ceremony. Visit a battlefield. Read the Declaration of Independence again. Do something — anything — that reconnects you to the long chain of people who believed that freedom was worth defending.
America’s story has never been one of perfection. It has been one of aspiration. Of striving. Of refusing to accept that the world must remain as it is.
As we mark 250 years of this improbable republic, may we recommit ourselves to the ideals that shaped it — and to the children around the world who still believe in them.
Their future, their voice. Our principles, our responsibility.