To the editor:

Mayor Boog Highberger’s proclamation of International Dadaism Month is a perfect epitaph for a culture which has undergone total philosophical collapse under the influence of our modern intellectuals.

Dadaism is not simply some lighthearted, whimsical way to lighten up boring commission meetings, nor is it just a quirky theory of esthetics. It represents a deeper philosophy that upholds nihilism, deliberate irrationalism, disillusionment and the total rejection of man’s mind as a means of understanding reality.

Hugo Ball and the rest of the Dadaists were indeed reacting to the horrors of World War I, but they did so by embracing the very intellectual premises that made it and all the horrors of 20th century collectivism possible. Ball was a profoundly mystical, militantly irrational anarchist who rejected objective reality, science, logic, reason and individual rights, giving us in answer to the world’s problems nothing but phonetic babbling and illogical sounds. It is no wonder our mayor likes him.

Any politician who believes “reason and anti-reason, consciousness and unconsciousness, belong together as necessary parts of a whole” is beyond hope.

In response to our mayor’s Dadaism Month, I would propose a single “Day of Reason” for Lawrence residents to study the writings of Ayn Rand. She was the one 20th century philosopher who consistently upheld objective reality, reason, individual rights and limited government. We either embrace objective reality, reason, and all its corollaries, or eventually devolve into the madness of “zimzim urallala zimzim.”

David Claassen-Wilson,

Lawrence