Austerity over Potency

Sir / On your article "The Big Car: End of the Affair" [Dec. 31], I find it distressing, sick, and almost unimaginable that there is little that can replace the gluttonous oversized cars as a part of the American dream. For a Christian nation, we sure are hung up on the tangibles anyway.

A small car feels like the automotive extension of oneself, while an American V-8 is so dwarfing that I feel like it is driving me. Finally (perhaps best of all), people compliment me on my genuine austerity rather than my feigned "potency."

PAUL TRUSTEN Woburn, Mass.

Sir / It seems to me totally unthinking for a person to drive a power-steered -braked and -shifted, heavily insured (does its owner insure his own life so well?), overstuffed, $5,000 or more investment to the corner store or even 35 miles to work when something half the size and cost will do the job, polluting half as much and perhaps giving a little exercise.

It sure would be nice to see Detroit get into a "more mileage from less horsepower" advertising campaign and thus act positively in a situation they are partially responsible for creating with 50 years of "more powerful and bigger is better" advertising.

DON WOOLF Los Angeles

Sir / The big cars are the dinosaurs of the future-and the future is now!

VIRGINIA E. SNYDER San Diego

Sir / As if there weren't enough to be bothered with these days, now the owners of small cars are persecuting the owners of larger cars because we are taking all of their gas. As for myself, I'd rather take my chances of survival in a larger car than a compact, especially on the New Jersey Turnpike. And it does seem strange that there are full oil tankers cruising up and down the Delaware River with no place to deposit their cargo.

MARK A. JOHNSON Voorhees, N.J.

Sir / You are correct that the Governor of Delaware has opted for a smaller vehicle. Governer Sherman W. Tribbitt prefers riding in his own Chevrolet hardtop on state business, rather than the state-owned limousine. Your reference, nevertheless, was to the wrong Governor. Russell W. Peterson is the former Delaware Governor who traded in his limousine for a Ford Pinto in his new role as head of the Council on Environmental Quality in Washington. D.C.

IRENE E. SHADOAN Press Secretary to the Governor Dover. Del.

Corruption of the Best

Sir / Thomas Griffith's Essay, "Corruption in the U.S." [Dec. 31], brings to mind a Latin phrase that seems to explain why many of us are uptight about the recent White House pursuits: Corruptio optimi pessima --the corruption of the best is the worst of all.

MERLIN W. HUGHES Gassville. Ark.

Sir / Like the movie stars they so often seem to emulate, American politicians have lost texture, abandoning the tough philosophical basis on which the nation was founded. Politics no longer confronts, never mind answers, the ethical and philosophical demands that the earliest political theorists thought important. In our laxity, the U.S. has created a republic run by men who are constantly assaulted by crises that (as our current situation shows) cannot be adequately settled with a day-to-day, moment-to-moment ethos based on opinion polls and soft, ultimately perishable concerns.

Do not ask "what the hell have we done?" Rather, who will tell us what the hell we will do? Meanwhile. I light my lantern and wander the streets.

KEVIN B. O'NEILL Princeton, N.J.

Sir / Your Essay makes a very convincing case that corruption has always been with us. What it fails to explain is the strident volume of press reports on the subject after the 1972 election. It is almost as though this were the first time that corruption was called to the attention of the press.

One would attribute a higher degree of impartiality to the press if irregularities had always been treated with a uniform degree of intensiveness.

A.R. ALLAN Washington. N.C.

Obscure Motives

Sir / If we know our history, understand psychology, and are tolerant and open-minded, we can easily realize that the remarks of Daniel Berrigan [Dec. 31] and the others are just another example of individuals, institutions and nations exploiting hatred through the development of anti-Semitism for whatever expedient purpose. Hitler's motives were obvious. Father Berrigan's motives, however, seem to be more obscure. I do not know whether he is motivated, as the Arabs are, by a perverted sense of political and economic interests or whether he is just looking for an audience (those who hate are always eager listeners to hatred propaganda). I cannot excuse it as misguided stupidity or ignorance. The danger is obvious.

DAVID NUSBAUM

New York City

Sir / Father Berrigan's statements about Israel are added testimony to his courage and sincerity as an advocate of peace and justice. That his incisively true remarks would infuriate some American Jewish religious leaders is significant. These leaders cannot separate the concept of Israel as a foreign political entity from the concept of Judaism as a religious faith.

As for the Gandhi Peace Prize, Father Berrigan deserves it even more now. Gandhi deplored the Zionist colonial adventure in Palestine, branding it an injustice and a threat to peace.

H.S. HADDAD President Association of Arab-American University Graduates Oak Lawn. Ill.

Sir / Regardless of one's position on Berrigan's moral perspective, it is difficult to believe that he is an anti-Semite of any kind.

More troubling to my mind is Rabbi Hertzberg's apparent attempt to link criticism of Israel with antiSemitism. The real issues in the Middle East--the fate of the Palestinians, control over Jerusalem, and the right of all nations, including Israel, to secure and just borders--defy facile solutions of any kind. They will be settled, if at all, in a spirit of intellectual honesty and compromise on all sides.

LARRY J. GALLAGHER San Diego

Pervasive Narcissism?

Sir / As a college teacher, I can suggest a reason for the downward trend in Scholastic Aptitude Tests scores overlooked in the article [Dec. 31]. It is the pervasive narcissism of our contemporary culture that deflects today's capable youth from mastering the accumulated knowledge of the past, which is the province of higher education. Scholastic aptitude is not aptitude for finding "the real me" in sensitivity to adolescent angst, or in self-serving activism for student rights. Since these are the major concern of brighter young people today, is it any wonder that traditional measurements reflect what they do?

JOHN H. KELSON Mankato, Minn.

Sir / The decline in verbal SAT scores does not have to indict either the schools or the students. Educational efforts of the past decade have shifted toward a more analytic type of learning at the expense of a large vocabulary of twelve-letter words. Unfortunately, it seems that America's primary means of judging her youth's intelligence has not changed to evaluate more fairly these differently educated minds. The SAT tests a worthless ability-that of memorizing words you will rarely use in high school, college or later life, unless, of course, you are employed writing up the SAT.

SHARON ANDREWS Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir / The reason for the decline in the SATs seems to me, as the mother of two college-age children, to be as plain as the TV in our living room. The 27 hours a week spent by the average young person in front of the tube used to be devoted to that once exciting childhood pastime, reading.

JANE S. BURNER Scotch Plains, N.J

The Price

Sir / I was moved by the statement of Arthur Krause [Dec. 24], whose daughter was killed at Kent State-"I'll show you; I'll make the system work." Though I deplore the lengths he had to go to get a grand jury investigation, I must thank him for acting on a much neglected moral premise: no system can provide justice (or anything else) automatically There is no substitute for people who care enough to work for what is right. Perhaps Krause personifies Jefferson's dictum. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

JOHN A. HUBERT East Hartford, Conn.

Clear History

Sir / You may not approve of the bill to help the railways [Dec. 24], but you do violence to the facts in characterizing it as "one of the biggest federal giveaways since Congress handed out land for a two-company transcontinental railroad in 1862." As a generation of historians has made abundantly clear, the rate reductions accorded the U.S. by all the federal grants between 1850 and 1871 brought back to the Treasury far more (some claim nine times as much) than the value of the granted lands. If the bill has a similar outcome, both the Treasury and the humble taxpayer will have cause for rejoicing.

RICHARD C. OVERTON Manchester Depot, Vt.

Sir / As an airline employee, I read with clenched teeth the article on the Government's latest multibillion-dollar giveaway to the ruined Northeastern railroads.

While Uncle Sam is doling out our tax money to a bankrupt part of the transportation industry he shows a complete lack of concern for the estimated 25,000 employees of the growing (and unsubsidized) trunk airlines who have lost their jobs owing to an arbitrary 25% cut in the lines' fuel allocations.

This is the only form of mass transportation to have to bear the full crunch of the Administration's mishandling of the energy squeeze.

DAVID F O'BRIEN Lewisville. Texas

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