Next week we’ll commemorate Independence Day — that holiday when we set things on fire to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In view of the fire danger in southwestern Colorado, we think it’s time to start a different tradition.

Students of history will remember that the colonists were rebelling against taxation without representation. As soon as they settled the distracting matter of the Revolution, they got down to the business of setting up a new government, complete with provisions for taxation and for making laws that would help citizens live in relative harmony with each other. Such harmony includes not starting fires that burn homes, businesses and public lands.

Certain types of fireworks remain legal, even during this season of extreme dryness, but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense at all to play with them. It’s true that we’ve banned Roman candles, bottle rockets and the other pyrotechnics most likely to launch sparks onto neighboring property, but sparklers and snakes are also capable of lighting nearby brush on fire. Now we’ve banned the lighting of those items as well, but they’re still available for purchase.

Prohibiting fireworks is a mixed blessing because, like other types of prohibition, it drives the prohibited behavior underground. We don’t want youngsters sneaking off into the woods to indulge their firebug tendencies. If they’re going to shoot fireworks at all, they ought to do it under the supervision of adults and with a garden hose nearby.

But is there really any reason to do it at all? Local communities and the Ute Mountain Casino all host impressive fireworks displays, and those events provide opportunities for socialization and patriotic observance. The Cortez fireworks can be seen from nearly every house in the community, as well as from many vantage points in the surrounding rural areas.

With that in mind, there’s no real reason to take the risks involved in allowing any sort of personal fireworks at all. We’ve banned other kinds of burning, including trash fires and, on federal public lands, even smoking. That should tell us all that fireworks are a poor idea. They shouldn’t be used, and they shouldn’t be sold, and those people who are tempted to flout the ban on fireworks are the very last ones who should be allowed to possess them.

This is an example of the need for cooperation between the states that make up the Four Corners. There’s no point in banning fireworks if they can be bought a few miles down the road. New Mexico learned its lesson early this year, and Gov. Bill Owens was insightful enough to realize that the same conditions prevailed in Colorado. Now we can only hope that all his constituents are equally sensible.

Honoring the Patriots by recreating the rockets’ red glare is a sentimental idea, but fireworks, a Chinese invention, aren’t inherently patriotic. A more appropriate celebration might be to read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and to consider history. Freedom wasn’t an abstract idea for the colonists. If the East Coast had been a barren landscape of blackened trees and bare dirt, they wouldn’t have been there in the first place, because they’d crossed the Atlantic seeking the land of opportunity.