Review: Things that Matter

Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics

by Charles Krauthammer

     Thank you Mom for the gift of meeting the special person.  The sharing in  Charles Krauthammer's "Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics" was like sitting in the living room listening to an incredibly educated, well informed, personable, amiable and reasonable person.  My mother likes for me to meet people like this so I can understand why she gave me the book.  It is actually, largely, a collection of his articles written for the Washington Post.

     I knew that Mr. Krauthammer was a TV news commentator of the conservative perspective. Due to the fact that my wife and I have not had a television in our home for over 30 years of marriage I do not (and have not) listened very little to Mr. Krauthammer.  This book is the primary source of information about Mr. Krauthammer and having now read it I can see why he so highly sought as a commentator.  Mr.  Krauthammer knows history and he is aware of the a larger picture about the present that includes the human spirit.

     I was surprised that Mr. Krauthammer was once a liberal.  His transition to "conservative" was driven by his questions, reasons, observations and validations.  Now, clearly, he is a "conservative" though with caveats.  He does not match all the stereotypical check boxes that some have come to associate with grass shewing, rednecks unaware of the larger world except for what they see in the sights of their unregistered gun during hunting season.  In his book he shares data supported insights, humor, uses rational scientific theories (like evolution) and opposed the death penalty.  Even so he is a conservative like myself. 

     One of the things that Charles has is historical and political insight that is rarely clearly presented.  An example is his comment on the communist revolutions of the 20th century (pgae 3):

          "The Russian Revolution and its imitators (Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, Cambodian) tried to atomize society thoroughly- to war against the mediating structures that stand between the individual and the state-that the most basic bonds of family, faith fellowship and conscience came to near dissolution"

     This statement captures volumes of works by many authors and scholars who have looked at these revolutions.  The state and the individual is all that a liberal needs and the elimination of the mediating structures of  family and faith are eradicated for the sake of the state.  I could tell on page 3 that this person was special.  He mentions (on page 135) the end of all the jibberish about revolutions similar (including the French) with  Sint-Just's famous formulation: 
     "The Republic consists in the extermination of everything that opposes it".  This brutal circularity of logic not revolution but nihilism".

        The author also has a sense of proportionality that leads to humor laced throughout the book.  Humor that softens the bite of his reasoning at times like on his treatment of American arrogance: 

            "My beef with American arrogance is not that we act like a traditional power, occasionally knocking off foreign bad guys who richly deserve it.  My problems is that we don't know where to stop-the trivial victories we insist on having in arenas that are quite superfluous. Like the women's Hockey game in the 2002 Winter Olympics.  Did the U.S. team really need to beat China 12-1?"

       A conservative like Charles cites evolutionary psychologists that explain "children and ladies to the life boats first". He dares to then  reveal that mothers are the key to nurturing our youth and no one can do it better.  So while he his calling on the primary need to protect and care for children, the recognizes the primary care givers of children are women he is left with men being the last to the lifeboats.  It is kind of humorous to realize, as the author does, that he is a sexist and chauvinist even if his position is well reasoned and contrary to our modern society that ridicules and mocks such chauvinism.

     How about a conservative against the death penalty?  Sort of like an oxymoron but I am refreshed to here him espouse a position described by Saint Pope John Paul II described on page 153:

    "Thus those who oppose capital punishment...on the grounds that an advanced civilized society should strive to preserve public order and social peace with an absolute minimum of official violence to life and liberty." then later "it would be a credit to our society to try and get by without the noose and the gag."

       On page 195 Charles says "There is great power in owning your own death-and even greater power in forever dispossessing your infidel victims of theirs."  This New testament idea actually held by a conservative. 

    The standard checklist of unthinking conservatives wanting to harshly treat humanity clearly does not apply to Mr. Charles Krauthammer.  I was glad to meet him and read his thoughtful prose!