I was disappointed that several of our neighbors chose to celebrate the birth of our nation by actively denying a core principle on which it was founded.

The countywide ban on fireworks was not a law imposed by a King George or other external authority. It was a result of direct democracy — voted in not once but twice by the direct vote of the citizens of the county. It was the purest form of democracy in action; an act of government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Yet last night some of our neighbors preferred the politics of the black-clad, bandana-faced atheists whose apparent philosophy of social “order” is “I want what I want and no stinkin’’ law is going to stop me.”

Given a choice between belief in or rejection of the basic principle of our government, these neighbors chose rejection.

How ironic, and also how sad, that so many of our neighbors celebrated the birth of our great nation by negating the core ideal of self-government on which it was founded and voting, by their deeds, in favor of a society of lawlessness and anarchy.

Christopher Hodgkin/Friday Harbor