U4 A Red Light for Scofflaws中英对照

A Red Light for Scofflaws

Law-and-order is the longest-running and probably the best-loved political issue in . history. Yet it is painfully apparent 2 that millions of Americans who would never think of themselves as lawbreakers, let alone criminals, are taking increasing liberties with the legal codes that are designed to protect and nourish their society. 3 Indeed, there are moments today — amid outlaw litter, tax cheating, illicit noise and motorized anarchy — when it seems as though the scofflaw represents the wave of the future. 4 Harvard Sociologist David Riesman suspects that a majority of Americans have blithely taken to committing supposedly minor derelictions as a matter of course. Already, Riesman says, the ethic of U.S. society is in danger of becoming this: “You're a fool if you obey the rules.”

法律和秩序，可以说是美国历史上历时最久、或许还是人们最爱谈论的政治问题。然而，说来痛心，显然有成百万从来没有想过自己会违法——更不用说犯罪——的美国人，对于遵守那些旨在保护和维持他们的社会的法律条文，却愈来愈表现得放肆起来。今天，随处乱扔拉圾、逃税、违禁噪音，以及开汽车的无序状态，真是比比皆是；有时简直使人觉得，玩忽法令者似乎代表了未来的潮流。哈佛大学的社会学者戴维•里斯曼认为，大多数美国人都不以为然、毫无顾忌地喜欢犯些所谓的小过失。里期曼说，今天美国社会的道德规范已差不多快变成“谁守法谁就是傻瓜”了。

Nothing could be more obvious than the evidence supporting Riesman. Scofflaws abound in amazing variety. 5 The graffiti-prone turn public surfaces into visual rubbish. Bicyclists often ride as though two-wheeled vehicles are exempt from all traffic laws. 6 Litterbugs convert their communities into trash dumps.

Widespread flurries of ordinances have failed to clear public places of high-decibel portable radios, just as earlier laws failed to wipe out the beer-soaked hooliganism that plagues many parks. 7 Tobacco addicts remain hopelessly blind to signs that say NO SMOKING. Respectably dressed pot smokers no longer bother to duck out of public sight to pass around a joint. The flagrant use of cocaine is a festering scandal in middle and upper-class life. And then there are (hello, everybody!) 8 the jaywalkers.

里斯曼的论断，随处都可得到极为充分的证实。玩忽法令者形形色色，令人吃惊。喜欢在公共场所乱涂乱写的人，把这些地方弄得满目疮痍。骑自行车无拘无束，仿佛两轮车就可以不遵守交通规则似的。随处乱扔拉圾的人把他们的居住区变成了拉圾堆。到处张贴的禁令，也未能使公共场所免于手提收音机的高分贝噪音的污染，正如前些日子颁布禁令，禁止灌醉啤酒的流氓滋扰公园，竟毫无作用一样。瘾君子对那些“禁止吸烟”的布告牌视若无睹。衣冠楚楚的大麻烟客传递毒品也不再躲躲闪闪，避人耳目。可卡因毒品泛滥，成了中上层社会中愈来愈恼人的丑闻。当然，还有那些不遵守交通规则，乱穿马路的人。

The dangers of scofflawry vary widely. The person who illegally spits on the sidewalk remains disgusting, but clearly poses less risk to others than the company that illegally buries hazardous chemical waste in an unauthorized location. The fare beater on the subway presents less threat to life than the landlord who ignores fire safety statutes. 9 The most immediately and measurably dangerous scofflawry, however, also happens to be the most visible. The culprit is the American driver, whose lawless activities today add up to a colossal public nuisance. 10 The hazards range from routine double parking 11 that jams city streets to the drunk driving that kills some 25,000 people and injures at least

650,000 others yearly. 12 Illegal speeding on open highways? New surveys show that on some interstate highways 83% of all drivers are currently ignoring the federal 55 m .p. h. speed limit.

玩忽法令的危害有轻有重。在人行道上随地吐痰，当然是令人讨厌的；但与那些大工厂在非指定地点违法掩埋化学废料的作法相比，其对公众的危害则要小多了。乘地下火车不买票，当然不会象房东老板无视防火安全条文那样会危及人的生命安全。然而正是这些极常见的玩忽法令行为，其为害却最直接最严重。罪魁祸首要算那些无法无天的驾驶汽车的美国人，其所做所为成了今天的巨大公害。这种危害，从日常的双重停车 ( 指把车停在业已顺停在路边的车辆的旁边——译注 ) ，致使交通阻塞，到酒后开车，导致每年车祸死亡 25,000 人，伤者至少 65 万人。高速公路上超速行驶的情况又是怎样呢 ? 据近期统计，某些州际高速公路上，通常有 83% 的开车人都无视联邦关于最高时速 55 英里的规定。

The most flagrant scofflaw of them all is the red-light runner. The flouting of stop signals has got so bad in Boston that residents tell an anecdote about a cabby who insists that red lights are “ just for decoration ” .The power of the stoplight to control traffic seems to be waning everywhere. In Los Angeles, red-light running has become perhaps the city's most common traffic violation. In New York City, going through an intersection is like Russian roulette. Admits Police Commissioner Robert J. Mc Guire: “Today it's a 50-50 tossup as to whether people will stop for a red light.” Meanwhile, his own police largely ignore the lawbreaking.

最明目张胆的藐视法律的行径要算闯红灯了。在波士顿，无视停车信号的状况已经严重到了如此程度，以至在当地居民中流传着这样一个趣闻：一位出租汽车司机竟然坚持说，

红灯只不过是“街头的装饰品而已”。停车指示灯控制交通的能力，似乎处处都在减弱。在洛杉矶，闯红灯恐怕要算该市最常见的交通违章现象。在纽约市，通过交叉路口就象玩轮盘赌 ( 参加者轮流用一支只装有一颗子弹的左轮手向自己头部扣动扳机——译注 ) ，不知何时就会出事。罗伯特•麦克盖尔承认：“如今红灯亮了是否停车，就象玩掷币游戏，机会各一半。”而他署下的，对这种违章行为大都视而不见。

Red-light running has always been ranked as a minor wrong, and so it may be in individual instances. 13 When the violation becomes habitual, widespread and incessant, however, a great deal more than a traffic management problem is involved. The flouting of basic rules of the road leaves deep dents in the social mood. Innocent drivers and pedestrians pay a repetitious price in frustration, inconvenience and outrage, not to mention a justified sense of mortal peril. The significance of red-light running is magnified by its high visibility. If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, then furtiveness is the true outlaw's salute to the force of law-and-order. The red-light runner, however, shows no respect whatever for the social rules, and society cannot help being harmed by any repetitious and brazen display of contempt for the fundamentals of order.

闯红灯常常被列为小错误，就个别情况而言，这也许不是大错。然而，一旦人们形成习惯，违章不断，随处皆是，那就远不仅是一个交通管理问题了 . 藐视交通法规的现象给公众心理造成深深的创伤。无辜的开车人和行人一次次地感到沮丧，忍受种种不便和伤害，更不用说对生命危险的正当担心了。闯红灯现象比比皆是，更增强了其危害性。如果说伪善是对美德所表示的敬意，那么鬼鬼崇崇便是犯罪分子对法律与制序的真心实意的敬礼了。然而，闯红灯的人对社会规章却毫无敬意可言，而任何屡禁不止、厚颜无耻的藐视社会秩序基本要求的行径，都会使社会无法免受其害。是个别情况。”

The scofflaw spirit is pervasive. It is not really surprising when schools find, as some do, that their children frequently enter not knowing some of the basic rules of living together. For all their differences, today’s scofflaws are of a piece as a symptom of elementary social demoralization---the loss by individuals of the capacity to govern their own behavior in the interest of others.

这种无视法律的风气无处不在。所以当有些学校发现，孩子们入学时经常连最起码的集体生活规则都不懂时，就不足为奇了(有些学校的确是这样认为)。尽管无视法律的人各种各样，但是他们都是社会基本道德败坏症候的一种表现——一个人失去了为了他人的利益而约束自己的能力。

The prospect of the collapse of public manners is not merely a matter of etiquette. Society’s first concern will remain major crime, but a foretaste of the seriousness of incivility is suggested by what has been happening in Houston. Drivers on Houston freeways have been showing an increasing tendency to replace the rules of the road with violent outbreaks. Items from the Houston police department’s new statistical category—freeway traffic violence: 1) Driver flashes high-beam lights at car that cut in front of him, whose occupants then hurl a beer can at his windshield, kick out his tail lights, slug him eight stitches’ Dump-truck driver annoyed by delay batters trunk of stalled car ahead and its driver was trying to stay within 55 m. p. h. limit. The Houston Freeway syndrome has fortunately not spread everywhere. But the question is: Will it?

在公共礼仪崩溃的前景并不只是一个礼仪问题。社会最关心的将仍然是主要的犯罪（见封面故事），而是一个严肃的非礼预示了什么是发生在休斯顿的建议。休斯敦的高速公路上

驾驶已显示增加的趋势，取代与暴力爆发的道路规则。从休斯敦局的新的统计分类，高速公路交通的暴力行为：1个）司机在闪烁车高束灯光，削减前的他，其占用然后投掷啤酒可以在他的挡风玻璃，踢了他的尾灯，塞他8针'的价值。 2）自卸卡车司机因延误打者主干的汽车前进，停滞与螺栓司机恼火。 3）赶路的18轮卡车司机故意追尾汽车的司机试图留在55英里每小时。

Americans are used to thinking that law-and-order is threatened mainly by stereotypical violent crime. When the foundations of . law have actually been shaken, however, it has always been because ordinary law-abiding citizens took to skirting the law. Major instance: Prohibition. Recalls Donald Barr Chidsey in On and Off the Wagon:” Law breaking proved to be not painful, not even uncomfortable,

but, in a mild and perfectly safe way, exhilarating.” People wiped out Prohibition at last not only because of the alcohol issue but because scofflawry was seriously undermining the authority and legitimacy of government. Ironically, today’s scofflaw spirit, whatever its undetermined origins, is being encouraged unwittingly by government at many levels. The failure of police to enforce certain laws is only the surface of the problem: they take their mandate from the officials and constituents they serve. Worse, most state legislatures have helped subvert popular compliance with the federal 55 m. p. h. law, some of them by enacting puny fines that trivialize transgressions. On a higher level, the Administration in Washington has dramatized its wish to nullify civil rights laws simply by opposing instead of supporting certain court ordered desegregation rulings. With considerable justification, environmental groups, in the words of Wilderness magazine, accuse the Administration of “destroying environmental laws by failing to enforce them, or by enforcing them in ways that deliberately encourage

noncompliance.” Translation: scofflawry at the top.

美国人习惯于认为，固定形式的暴力犯罪是对法律和秩序的主要威胁。然而，却正是由于普通的遵纪守法的公民设法钻法律的空子才真正动摇了美国法律的基础。主要例子：禁酒令。唐纳德〃巴〃契德斯在《戒酒与否》一书中回忆道：“违法事实上是不痛苦的，甚至都没有令人不舒服的感觉，反而以一种柔和的、完全安全的方式令人欢喜。”人们终于废除了禁酒令，不仅是因为酒的问题，而且因为违法行为严重地损害了的威信和合法地位。具有讽刺意味的是，不管今天这种无视法律的风气源于何处，它却受到各级的无可奈何的鼓励。未能强制实行某些法律仅仅是问题的表面，他们只不过是从他们为之服务的和选民那里接受命令。更糟糕的是，大多数的州立法机构在公众遵守联邦法律规定的车速不得超过每小时 55 英里的规定时却帮了倒忙，其中一些州甚至擅自规定超速仅处以很少的罚款以使大事化小。更高一级的华盛顿则用反对（而不是支持）某些已成为法律条文的取消种族隔离的规定的办法，来实现其取消民权法律的效力的愿望，这真是令人啼笑皆非。据《荒原》杂志报导， 环保组织以相当正当的理由指责当局破坏环境保，因为它未能推行该法规，或是虽然推行但却故意怂恿人们违反法规。这解释为：最高一级的违法行为。

The most disquieting thing about the scofflaw spirit is its extreme infectiousness. Only a terminally foolish society would sit still and allow it to spread indefinitely.

无视法律之风最令人不安之处在于它的极端传染性。只有最愚蠢的社会才会坐视不管、任其蔓延。