CAMBRIA, CA - Independence Day here on California’s central coast, where I partake each year of what Vernon
Parrington called "the great American barbecue," brings a startling reminder of the inexorable trend of our
time. The local fireworks show, sponsored for as long as I can recall by the American Legion, almost didn’t
come off this year because just a few weeks ago the Legion learned that it hadn’t applied for the necessary
federal permit.

A federal permit for a July 4 fireworks show in a California town of some 5,000 residents? Some years ago
the great iconoclast Eugene McCarthy wryly noted that the American revolution wasn’t fought with matching
grants from the Crown, nor did the signers of the Declaration pledge their lives, their sacred honor, and
up to $1,000 in federal matching funds. Requiring a federal permit to observe our founding act of
revolutionary defiance puts an exclamation point on Tocqueville’s famous prophecy that the kind of
despotism our democracy had most to fear was bureaucracy.

Perhaps, you think, since this is a dry part of California, the feds are merely concerned to prevent the kind of inferno the Department of Interior recently started in New Mexico, torching thousands of acres and hundreds of houses. But you would be wrong. This part of California’s coastline is in a national marine sanctuary, so one of the conditions of the federal permit is that the show not begin with a "big boom" salute, because these loud reports "can cause sea lions to stampede, sometimes crushing pups in the melee as adults rush for the water in a panic," said a federal spokesman.

Never mind that the nearest colony of basking elephant seals is nearly 10 miles north of the fireworks site.
Besides, there are other benefits of federal regulation of fireworks displays. "Loud, percussive rounds that
just explode, with no color bursts," the federal spokesman said, "set off car alarms, and cause dogs to
howl." The feds required that the fireworks show "delay the salutes to five minutes into the display, allowing
startled mammals to leave the area more gradually in reaction to the classical color bursts, which are less
alarming and less noisy." So the rocket’s red glare is still okay (at least until we determine its
contribution as an ozone pollution precursor), but the bombs bursting in air is right out.

The effect, if not the object, of bureaucratic government is to induce dependence, under which, in
Tocqueville’s memorable words, "each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious
animals, of which the government is the shepherd." Tocqueville astutely added: "I have always thought that
servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily
than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish
itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people."

Doubtless, a federal permit for a July 4 barbecue cannot be long delayed. Under this kind of government,
not to mention truth in advertising laws, the July 4 holiday needs to be renamed: "Dependence Day."

- By Steven Hayward