Review of Things that Matter by Charles Krauthammer:

Review of Things that Matter by Charles Krauthammer:
When I used to watch Fox News on a regular basis, I would always tune in to Special Report with Bret Baier.  There were two reasons for this.  Bret is an alum of Marist High School in Atlanta, thereby making him a product of a Catholic parochial education.  I have a similar background, just from a different order of Catholic educators, Jesuits instead of Marists.  Nevertheless, I felt an affinity, a kinship of sorts, with this celebrity who had also beenshaped in the crucible of Catholic secondary education.
The other, and more significant, rationale for being a regular viewer of Special Report was Sir Charles Krauthammer.  I say “Sir” not to in any way intimate that he was officially knighted by the Queen of England, although he grew up in Canada and for a time schooled at Oxford, but to highlight how distinguished an individual Charles Krauthammer was.  He brought that quality to the panel deliberations that remain the closing segment of Special Report.Whatever political topic was being discussed I would anxiously await to hear Sir Charles’ take on it.   Sometimes I could anticipate his view.  More often he would bring something new to the table that I had never thought of and now had to take into consideration.Maybe my mind was not changed by what Sir Charles offered but what he offered forced me to think more deeply about the subject at hand.  I appreciated that and miss him for it.  Charles Krauthammer died two years ago on June 21st.
Thankfully he left us a legacy, an anthology from “three decades of passions, pastimes and politics” called Things That Matter.  As the title suggests, Krauthammer ruminates on things that matter to him while admitting that they may not matter to anyone else.  But that is the prerogative of any author, you can write about what you want.  Whether it sells is another matter!
Initially he intended the book to be apolitical.  His working title was There’s More to Life Than Politics.  But in time he recognized what fewcare to, that “Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything – high and low and, most especially, high – lives or dies by politics.  You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures.  Get politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away.  This is not ancient history.  This is Germany 1933.”   Some might add that this could be America in 2020.
That is why we need to think more deeply about, and find ways to discuss, things that matter to us all, so that together we can get “the crooked timber of our communal lives” right.  InThings That Matter the late Charles Krauthammer provides us with a profitable place to start.

Reviewed by Richard Dick. Library Assistant, O’Kelly Memorial Library


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