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Daily Nebraskan
Monday, March 15, 1982
Editorial
Alcohol problem begins with society's perception
Any skilled bartender who can whip up the most out
landish concoctions will tell you there are two ingredi
ents that just won't mix: drinking and. driving.
In recent months, that knowledge has moved out of
the barrooms and into legislatures across this country,
where representatives are proposing stricter measures for
dealing with drunken drivers.
That movement is especially strong in our own state.
According to state law, a first offender can receive up to
seven days in jail andor a fine up to $500. For a third
offense, a driver can receive up to five years in the peni
tentiary andor a fine up to $10,000. A judge can suspend
a driver's license for six months to a year. However,
several senators want those penalties stiffened, and five
bills are before the Nebraska Legislature to do just that.
The proposed changes range from requiring minimum
driver's license suspensions of two months to one year to
requiring mandatory 48-hour jail sentences for the first
offense and up to one year in the state penitentiary for
the third offense.
Several of the bills would eliminate probation as an
option for punishment.
Reagan's new song
has lame-duck tune
It seems that Ronald Reagan's theme song is quickly
changing from "Happy Days arc Here Again" to "The
Party's Over."
Across the country, and particularly in Washington,
D.C., people and politicians alike are finding that Reagan
is not inflicted with personal likeability so much as politi
cal leprosy.
Even the president's own party members are adopting a
"handsoff" attitude toward his policies. They want him
to bend his position enough so the American public will
be appeased, if not pleased.
Newspapers are filled to the brim with comment
regarding Reagan's problems. Richard Reeves says Ronald
Reid Warren
Reagan has a good chance to emerge as a lame-duck presi
dent. The probable loss of 38 Republican seats in the
House of Representatives, says Reeves, is going to lead to
a Democratic resurgence in November's elections.
Garry Wills says Ronald Reagan's policies are unravel
ing into a string of failure. Methodically, Wills goes down
a list of trouble spots which include virtually every aspect
of Reagan's presidency. And, yes, Wills also calls Reagan
a lame-duck president in only his second year of office.
Now, Reeves and Wills are not, needless to say, big
Reagan fans. Any casual observer is hard-pressed, in fact,
to name any person, outside the Reagan administration
who is in complete accord with Reagan's policies.
The president must change his position. Political neces
sity dictates such a maneuver. The American public and
Washington's officialdom totally will disown Reagan if he
doesn't add some stretch to his apparent inelasticity.
But, in the words of singer David Bromberg, "Don't let
false estimation rule ya," which is from a song entitled,
accurately, "Demon in Disguise."
If Reagan changes his position, which he will, don't be
misled. Most observers on the Washington scene know
that any change Reagan makes is not likely to be a big
one.
When Reagan makes his concessions, the feeling is that
such changes will make only a small, barely noticeable
dent in the overall schism of the Reagan philosophy.
Maybe he will make a $10 billion cut from the defense
budget, maybe some relinquishing on his tax program, and
maybe a few other bones thrown to Congress, but that'll
be it.
Most unfortunately, the main reason Reagan can afford
such stagnation with his proposals is the fact that, despite
public opinion, there are no alternatives. The Democratic
Congress has done everything to discredit Reagan's
policies but absolutely nothing to effectively counter
attack them.
Simply put, the only game in town is Reagan's. Right
now all the Democrats have are reactionary policies; noth
ing original, nothing on their own.
Maybe it's because of the November elections that the
Democrats figure they can sit back and relax while Reagan
hangs his own party.
And the Democrats, in all probability, will gain some
House seats in November. But the way they will have
done it does not bode well for their party.
Too often politics is based on reaction, rather than
action. The Democrats may find that they played their
cards wrong; by not taking positive action now, they have
left the door open for the Republicans to take action in
the future, before Reagan's term expires.
In the next two years, anyone who makes any kind of
clear, bold conscientious political decision-making will be
seen as rising above the political quagmire. The only
question is, will anyone be confident enough to make
such a move .
Figures published last week in The Lincoln Star show
these efforts are not ill-timed. Lincoln police arrested
1,886 drunk drivers in 1981; Lancaster County deputies
arrested 112. Alcohol was involved in 147, or 46 percent,
of the 321 fatal accidents in Nebraska in 1981 .
But those concerned about these figures can't agree on
how to attack the problem. Some, like the senators pro
posing bills, call for stifl'cr penalties. Others, like Nebraska
Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Krivosha,say stiffer
penalties won't defer drunk drivers as well as the know
ledge that offenders will be arrested and dealt with swiftly
within the judicial system.
Some argue that oy eliminating probation, the state
would be taking away the only opportunity some offend
ers have to get the alcoholism counseling they need.
But perhaps our scrutiny of the drunken driving prob
lem should go deeper. Society encourages drinking. As
children, most of us learn that drinking is an "adult"
activity. We either eagerly await our 20th birthday and
the legal opportunity to imbibe or we begin drinking
The various attempts - in Vermont town meetings, by
a referendum in California, etc. - to whip up public senti
ment for a mutual freeze on nuclear weapons by the Unit
ed States and the Soviet Union will of course attract the
usual crazies. But more sensible people, who simply want
to express concern over the dangers of nuclear war and
think this is a harmless way to do it, should be warned
that such pressures play right into the hands of the
Russians.
In the first place, just suppose the United States and
the Soviet Union agreed to destroy every last nuclear
weapon in their arsenals, along with all means of produc
ing them. The sole immediate result would be that the
relative strength of the Soviet Union relative, that is, to
the strength of the United States and its allies, measured
William Rusher
in terms of troops and "conventional" weapons - would
increase dramatically.
In other words, like it or not, the existence of nuclear
weapons in U.S. hands has long been the only effective
deterrent to Soviet global hegemony. We have never tried
to compete with the Soviet Union in terms of numbers of
men under arms, or numbers of rifles or tanks. Without
tactical nuclear weapons such as the neutron artillery war
head, any attempt to defend Western Europe against
Soviet attack would be downright laughable.
Advocates of mutual nuclear disarmament should ex
plain how they would propose to maintain peace without
the threat to use nuclear weapons if necessary. Is the sheer
utterance of such a threat really so dreadful? It has been
37 years, more than a third of a century, since the end of
World War II, and in all that time Europe, from the
Atlantic to the Urals, has never known a war. Why is this?
Is it because the Russians are so sweet-tempered and un
aggressive? No; it is precisely because of the existence of those
awesome weapons, which mindless peaceniks are so eager
to abolish. Destroy them, and you will see just how
rapidly war will descend upon Europe - and then the
world.
In the second place, the whole mutual-freeze move
ment is not in fact "mutual" at all. Ostensibly it is aimed
equally at the United States and the Soviet Union, but its
practical effects will be confined wholly to the United
illegally before we have reached that magic age. We drink
to feel grown up.
Ironically, once we arc grown up, many of us drink to
feel like children again - carefree and uninhibited.
Drinking alcohol is fine when done in moderation, but
too many of us ignore the signs that tell us we've had
enough. We get in our cars and tell ourselves we'll make it
home. But too many of us don't.
Perhaps the best way to deal with this problem is to
change the way our society looks at alcohol and its use.
We successfully altered society's perception of tobacco.
Why can't we do that with alcohol? If we begin training
our children now, in 20 years the problem could be less
severe .
No, the alcohol problem will never completely go
away, but we can temper it. Alcohol is a drug, not a harm
less elixir. People die because of its overuse. People need
to keep that fact in mind every time they get in their cars,
every time they take a drink.
States. The peoples of the Soviet Union will never hear
about it, and the leaders in the Kremlin are hardly likely
to be impressed. For one thing, as already pointed out,
they would only benefit if the campaign succeeded. But
actually they assume the West is too sensible to throw
away its ace in the hole, so the whole maneuver becomes
in their eyes merely an exercise in pacifist propaganda,
useful for softening up the West.
Not long ago, in Communist-controlled East Berlin, a
man who took seriously the need for mutual arms reduct
ions and troop withdrawal was ill-advised enough to call
for it publicly: he was promptly hustled off to jail.
What about the contention that most of the pressure is
not for mutual destruction of existing nuclear weapons,
but only for a mutual freeze on future production, test
ing and use? Such careful distinctions may rope in a few
more supporters, but they scarcely affect the impact of
the agitation at all. The whole beneficial effect of a
credible nuclear capability in American hands depends
upon the Soviet Union believing that it will be used if
necessary.
A solemn undertaking never to use nuclear weapo is of
any kind, or never to be the first to use them, would be
the equivalent of the destruction of existing nuclear stock
piles, and would have precisely the same effect: vastly to
increase, overnight, the relative strength of'the Soviet
Union.
It is ironic that the people who are agitating most
energetically for an end to the threat of war are exactly
the people who, by encouraging the Soviet leaders to
think they could win it, make war more likely. In this as
in other respects, our era is determining whether
democracy is a practical technique for survival in a world
that dreamers never nnde.
(c) 1982 Universal Press Syndicate
Editorial policy
Unsigned editorials represent the policy of the spring
1982 Daily Nebraskan but do not necessarily reflect the
views of the University of Nebraska, its employees or the
NU Board of Regents.
The Daily Nebraskan 's publishers are the regents, who
have established a publication board to supervise the daily
production of the newspaper. According to policy set by
the regents, the content of the UNL student newspaper
lies solely in the hands of its students editors.
Nuclear disarmament provokes war
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