Why would a Monitor reporter do any of this? The answer is right there in the headlines we read – or avoid reading – every day. Americans are grappling with an onslaught of issues that call into question just what holds us together as a nation, and they are doing this at the very moment the country is preparing to celebrate the 250th year of its independence. Taking a look at the issues that America’s founders, who met in Philadelphia to argue, negotiate, compromise, and finally write the Declaration of Independence, offers a chance to see how far America has come as a democracy, and how far it has yet to go.