IN THIS ISSUE — My small team and I run around to all manner of far-flung foreign locales, but we take special pleasure in traveling in our own backyard. Americans can explore an astonishingly diverse range of places without a passport. To celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary, we returned to destinations where some of the most important founding events occurred. Standing where the Declaration of Independence was signed, or where soldiers fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War — it’s awe-inspiring. These are the places that helped shape the United States: a country based on a creed dedicated to individual liberty, equality before the law and democratic republican government. What a remarkable and wonderful thing.