Watch: Irish Tourist Left Crying After Experience with Everyday Americans at Small, Christian Diner Changes Her Life
As a conservative and a Christian, I confess to having an almost visceral dislike of social media. Of all modern innovations, it has done most to foster self-absorption and the consequent sin of pride.
At its best, however, social media can also showcase love and joy. And that always makes up for the darkness.
For instance, in a TikTok video that went viral earlier this month, an Irish woman named Amy Jane, who goes by the name “justamyjane” on the platform, gushed about the experience she and her boyfriend, Scott, had just enjoyed at the Christian-friendly Liberty Restaurant in Scottsboro, Alabama.
“We have literally just had THE best restaurant experience that we’ll probably ever have in our lives, not to be dramatic,” the smiling Amy Jane said at the beginning of the video.
From there, the joyful Irish woman went on at length about the restaurant, which she characterized as the best in the South, the United States, and maybe the world. She could not stop smiling about the servers, whom she called “kind” and “lovely.”
According to Amy Jane, the employees and even the owner went above and beyond to make her and Scott feel welcome. Gestures included a free dessert, souvenir, and comped meal, as well as a request that the visitors sign the restaurant wall and a promise to alert other patrons to Amy Jane’s social media pages.
In the end, the young Irish woman described herself as “gutted to be leaving.”
“I was crying in the restaurant because I was so moved by it,” she concluded.
@justamyjane When they say southern hospitality is the best in the world, they aren’t lying! Completely overwhelmed by the kindness of the staff in Liberty Restaurant & Diner in Scottsboro, Alabama, USA 🥹❤️🇺🇸 #southernhospitality #alabama #irishinamerica ♬ original sound – AmyJane | Everything Vibey 🌀
The Liberty Restaurant’s Facebook page features an array of food-, nature-, and patriotic-themed posts, as well as some humorous ones.
On Sunday, the restaurant also posted a verse from the Book of Romans.
Since the start of the ongoing World Cup, many foreign visitors have posted glowing social media reports about America.
As she explained in another TikTok video, however, Amy Jane and Scott did not visit America for the soccer tournament. Instead, they flew into Nashville and then traveled through Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, simply for the sake of seeing those places and learning about the people and their culture.
In that video, recorded on Sunday after their arrival back in Ireland, Amy Jane sported an Alabama Crimson Tide jersey. She also said that she hoped to return to Alabama for a football game in October.
Also in that video, Amy Jane marveled at the fact that the Liberty Restaurant video had blown up on TikTok. In fact, her pre-Liberty videos generally saw engagement with a few hundred people. As of Monday morning, however, the Liberty video had earned more than 137,400 “loves.”
“My following has doubled in like not even a week,” she reported.
@justamyjane Hi all my new American friends 🥹 hopefully this gives a lil bit of info about us! I’m so happy to have y’all here 🇺🇸❤️ #USA #AmericanRoadtrip #worldcup2026 #Tennessee #Alabama ♬ original sound – AmyJane | Everything Vibey 🌀
The question, of course, is why? What drew so many social media users to Amy Jane’s restaurant review?
Without conducting a scientific survey, we might at least offer a few plausible guesses.
First, there was Amy Jane’s pure joy at being received with kindness. As simple as that sounds, authentic joy attracts us like nothing else does.
Second, we love the fact that Amy Jane and Scott wanted to see the Deep South — the region of America most often slandered by other Americans, especially those who live on both coasts.
Readers know what I mean. To those self-styled elites, it is forever 1960 or even 1860 in America.
For instance, earlier this month on MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, host Ali Velshi, in what we could only describe as a parody of profound thought, complained that “America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.”
Never mind, of course, the hundreds of thousands of young lives lost in a war to destroy slavery. Americans have reckoned and reckoned and reckoned some more, only to have condescending liberals like Velshi demand that we do it again, because chiding Americans in places like Alabama makes him feel morally superior.
In short, people like Velshi refuse to celebrate America’s beauty or to acknowledge the innumerable blessings meted out to people who live here. They choose the ugly narrative, and it repulses the rest of us.
Amy Jane and Scott, on the other hand, reflected the America that ordinary Americans love.
Finally, Americans love this sort of reaction from foreigners.
We might not know Amy Jane and Scott personally. But we want them to feel joy in America. We take healthy pride in the way our fellow Americans treated them.
Most of all, perhaps, we love that they loved the people and places our bi-coastal elites despise.
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