Dear Editor
Dear Editor British Violence Many thanks for publishing Ray Alan's powerful critique of violence in the United Kingdom ("Brawl, Britannia," NL, November 26, 1984). Of course, his article was an...
...Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tells Britain that decline is as normal and natural as prosperity...
...But Walter Goodman's "Reflections on Forced Buckling'' (NL, November 26, 1984) lead him to conclude that "there must be cases in which seat belts forestall death only to leave the wearer with injuries that keep him hospitalized for a long time and require expensive methods of treatment...
...Cabinet are chosen by, as well as responsible to, the President, and no institutional device automatically gives the executive branch a majority in the legislature...
...Indeed, we are doing so at the present time...
...Perhaps it ought to be pointed out to them that the United Stales has lived with divided control of its national political bodies for a good part of its history...
...Men and women in the distressed areas—the individuals who are committing most of the violence—have the impression that society has abandoned them and have reacted accordingly...
...the god of the market has spoken against Manchester and Cardiff and must be obeyed...
...After all, he has no problem explaining his hostility toward the version of it put on this season at the Belasco Theater...
...Goodman is wrong, however, in suggesting that therefore the same rationale which produced the new law would logically require us to fine any gravely injured motorist who had buckled up...
...I hope your reviewer is not asking us to believe that any plav with a good message is a good play...
...Sooner or later Franee will have to learn the implications of its present constitutional arrangements—especially the fact that a government is still a bona fide government even i f it cannot manage to get its way all the lime...
...No doubt he is right...
...Many Frenchmen seem to regard such a government as a virtual contradiction in terms, a violation of sovereignty...
...Hence the ongoing fear of cohabitation...
...Atlanta D. Kirby Forced Buckling Those who advocated New York State's mandatory seat-belt law have argued that it will help reduce medical and insurance costs...
...New York City Reginald Smith French 'Cohabitation* Norman Bowen's excellent piece on the "French Socialists in Retreat" (NL, November 12, 1984) mentions the country's current debate on "cohabitation" —the possibility that after the 1986 elections the National Assembly may be dominated by the Right while the Left controls the Presidency...
...The "busybodies" he deplores do not contend that buckling saves money in every instance—only that it would be much cheaper and safer, overall...
...But Alan missed one important source of the tragedy: the growing social and economic inequalities among different parts of the country, and the feeling that the government is positively enthusiastic about them...
...Their relative poverty is hardly new, yet in the past it was acknowledged as a "problem" and various remedies were proposed and implemented to deal with it...
...Not in the Constitution, which says nothing about cars...
...Incidentally, if driving a car is a right rather than "a privilege granted under strictly regulated conditions," where does it originate...
...Americans are accustomed to the idea that the President cannot always see his program enacted, because wc, unlike the French, have never lived under a parliamentary form of government...
...Actually, 1 don't think this was his point at all—but why then does Sauvage like Fo's piece...
...Ineffectual as ultimate solutions, these measures did nevertheless persuade many people in the troubled regions that their misery was a matter of national concern...
...And certainly not in the State of Nature, for the accounts of it by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and other theorists do not mention automobiles at all...
...Chicago Peter Davis Inscrutable Fo I wish Leo Sauvage had invested as much effort in demonstrating why Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist "was among the most powerful plays New York has seen for a quite a while" as he put into justifying his dislike of the production ("So Far So Foolish," NL, November 26, 1984...
...Although those parliamentary mechanisms were abolished with the coming of the Fifth Republic, the French experienced them during the previous 90-odd years...
...London and the southeast of England are now wealthier than ever, while Wales and the north have become more depressed than they were in the '30s...
...Thus we have no familiarity with formal mechanisms for ensuring thai Congress and the White House will be inspired by a single political will...
...Indeed, the most important difference between the French system and ours lies in the expectations of I he citizenry...
...We have no such policemen, so we have to dispose of the seat-belt issue by propounding a general rule...
...Were we to try to decide who should use seat belts case by case, we would need policemen who could accurately predict whether or not a driver would get into an accident and, if so, whether the ultimate cost of keeping him alive would be higher than those of letting him die in the crash...
...New York City Edmund Toller...
...As in France, members of the U.S...
...Fo's work is indeed "politically uninhibited in every direction" and "methodically opposed to any kind of tyranny anywhere...
...But this merely shows that Sauvage approves of the author's politics...
...Of course, his article was an impressionistic survey of the disease, not an exhaustive catalogue of its causes...
...Not in the law as it stands, since Federal statutes compel auto manufacturers to install seat belts and, in a growing number of states, their use is mandated...
Vol. 68 • January 1985 • No. 1
