The Point of It All, by Charles Krauthammer

If there was ever a time we needed someone like Charles Krauthammer, it is now.  Sadly, the conservative commentator passed away in June.  It was a huge loss for the world of political commentary.  There are few talking heads on the air or in print today who possess his grace, wisdom, insight, and overall perspective.  Before he passed away, he gathered some of his work in the newly published The Point of It All: A Lifetime of Great Loves and Endeavors.  

These columns and essays span decades.  Even the older ones, though, remain relevant in providing context and insight for today's political environment.  On the personal side, Krauthammer reveals his love of chess and baseball in a number of the essays.  He also gives some insight into his physical limitations.  Krauthammer readers are probably aware that, while a student at Harvard Medical School, he became paralyzed from the waist down.  He finished his medical degree and practice psychiatry for several years before shifting to his writing career.

Krauthammer was a great advocate for the disabled, but chose not be defined by his disability or to use it as an excuse not to live productively.  He writes, "Disability . . . neither ennobles nor degrades.  I frames experience.  It does not define it."  In a letter to a young man who had recently suffered a spinal cord injury similar to his own, he wrote that "a good and productive and deeply enjoyable life is there waiting for you. . . . Life is more difficult with a spinal cord injury.  But the obstacles are not insurmountable."

The essays in The Point of It All cover a wide array of political topics and reveal Krauthammer's consistent, principled conservatism.  On guns, "There's only one gun law that would make a difference: confiscation. . . . And in this country, confiscation is impossible."  On politically correct efforts to reject the Western canon at universities: "Affirmative action for great books is an embarrassment. . . . A pastiche of 'global culture' for a population utterly ungrounded in its own produces the most haphazard jumble of knowledge."

In discussing the press, Krauthammer takes Trump's side--sort of.  The press is "the opposition party" whose front pages are "festooned . . . with anti-Trump editorializing masquerading as news."  Nevertheless, this is better than "a press acquiescing on bended knee, where it spent most of the Obama years in a slavish Pravda-like thrall."  

One can only hope that Krauthammer's admirers and former colleagues will take up his mantle of steady reasonableness and conservative thought.  I have seen, on at least two occasions, Fox News using video of Krauthammer's commentary even after his passing.  Clearly he has left a void.  Until a worthy successor appears, we can revisit his thinking in his many writings.


Thanks to NetGalley for the complimentary electronic review copy!