The Point of It All: A Lifetime of Great Loves and Endeavors - Hardcover

Krauthammer, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1984825488 ISBN 13: 9781984825483

Publisher: Forum Books, 2018

Synopsis

Created and compiled by Charles Krauthammer before his death, The Point of It All is a powerful collection of the influential columnist's most important works. Spanning the personal, the political and the philosophical, it includes never-before-published speeches and a major new essay about the effect of today's populist movements on the future of global democracy. Edited and with an introduction by the columnist's son, Daniel Krauthammer, it is the most intimate and profound book yet by the legendary writer and thinker.
 
In his decades of work as America's preeminent political commentator, Charles Krauthammer elevated the opinion column to a form of art. Whether writing about statecraft and foreign policy or reflecting on more esoteric topics such as baseball, spaceflight and medical ethics, Krauthammer was beloved not only for his penetrating wit and insight but also for his ability to identify the hidden moral truths that animate our politics and culture.
 
This new collection, which Krauthammer composed before his death in June 2018, features the columns, speeches and unpublished writings that showcase the best of his original thought and his last, enduring words on the state of American politics, the nature of liberal democracy and the course of world history.
 
The book also includes a deeply personal section offering insight into Krauthammer's beliefs about what mattered most to him--friendship, family and the principles he lived by--all anchored by Daniel Krauthammer's poignant eulogy for his father.
 
For longtime readers and newcomers alike, The Point of It All is a timely demonstration of what it means to cut through the noise of petty politics with clarity, integrity and intellectual fortitude. It is a reminder of what made Charles Krauthammer the most celebrated American columnist and political thinker of his generation, a revealing look at the man behind the words and a lasting testament to his belief that anyone with an open and honest mind can grapple deeply with the most urgent questions in politics and in life.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Krauthammer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, was a syndicated columnist, political commentator, physician and bestselling author. His Washington Post column ran weekly for 33 years and was syndicated in more than 400 newspapers worldwide. For over a decade he was a nightly panelist on Fox News' flagship evening-news broadcast Special Report. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and he was a member of Chess Journalists of America. Along with his wife Robyn, he cofounded Pro Musica Hebraica. He died on June 21, 2018.
 
Daniel Krauthammer's writing has appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review and The New Republic. He holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford in political science, economics and business administration, and has worked in government as well as in the entertainment and technology sectors. He spent the last year of his father's life close by his side in the hospital, where together they worked toward completing this book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PART I

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN

CHAPTER 1

LIFE WELL LIVED

Reveries of a Newborn Father

Three weeks ago Daniel Pierre Krauthammer, our first, entered the world. It was a noisy and boisterous entry, as befits a 10-­pound Krauthammer. It has been just as noisy and boisterous since. I had been warned by friend and foe that life would never be the same. They were right.

Of course, like all exhausted newborn fathers, I am just looking for sympathy. It is my wife, Robyn, whose life has been fully merged with his, in a symbiosis profound and delicate. His sucking, did you know, causes the uterus to contract and helps shrink it back to normal size. Twenty days old, and he is healing her.

What she does for him, of course, would not fit in a month’s worth of columns. What do I do? It seems my job is to father, a verb which must count as one of the age’s more inventive creations. How exactly to father? I don’t really know. The women’s movement, to which the idea owes its currency, is right to insist that the father do more.

But more of what? I have been asking myself that lately as I rock him and hold him and speak to him in the gravest of tones. But we both know, we all three know, the truth: Nature has seen to it that anything I can do, she can do better. Mine is literally a holding action.

Of course, the imperative to father is only the last of the social conventions one must bend to on the road to parenting. (I am learning the language.) First, there is Lamaze, the classes that teach you to be natural. Robyn does not fancy oxymorons. And I, as a former psychiatrist, know a placebo when I see one. We said no to Lamaze.

We said yes to the Volvo. In fact, on the Volvo we went all the way. We got the station wagon with roof rack: the ultimate yuppie conveyance. “For safety reasons only,” I explain to friends, a protest that meets with knowing smiles.

Finally, there is the supreme modern convention: the now-­absolute requirement that father, in surgical gear, attend the birth. Of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can, if you wish, wait outside, like Dagwood Bumstead, pacing and smoking and fretting until it’s over. You have the perfect right to betray your wife, spurn your child and disgrace your sex. It’s a free country.

The transformation of expectant father from nuisance—­packed off to boil water, find towels and generally get out of the way—­ to conscripted co-­producer of the birth epic is one of the anthropological wonders of the age. And on the whole, apart from the coercion, a good thing. Father’s presence serves two purposes. One is to reduce the anguish of the mother. The other is to increase the anguish of the father. Both seem to me laudable goals. It makes up a bit for the extraordinarily unfair imbalance of suffering that attends childbirth.

Thank God, the new convention does not (yet) command fathers to attend a caesarean delivery. I speak from experience. Robyn needed a caesarean and, hoping I could comfort her, I was with her in the operating room. I was not looking for a Maslovian peak-­experience, the kind of epiphany that reputedly accompanies the moment of birth. I was doubtful, not just because of my usual skepticism, but because of my previous career. In medical school, I had assisted at several births, including a couple of caesareans, and always had trouble seeing the poetry for the blood.

There was little poetry this time either. It was an agonizing hour for her, and for me. (Daniel did very well.) The poetry came afterward, in the recovery room, where I found Daniel asleep in Robyn’s arms.

It has been poetry and reverie ever since. Having a child, I discovered, makes you dream again and, at the same time, makes the dreams utterly real. Lately I have been dreaming of the future. I find entirely new meaning in what we in Washington call “out-­years.” Take 1989, the year the budget deficit comes down to $100 billion. A time far, far away . . . until I figured it is the year when we retire Daniel’s Pampers. A manageable deficit, only a few thousand nappy changes away.

Stranger years, years of exotic immensity, years that till now had meaning to Arthur C. Clarke only, become utterly mundane. 2001, the year of the mystical obelisk, and Daniel should be getting his learner’s permit. 2010, the obelisk returns and Daniel is looking for a job. 2050, a year of unimaginable distance: his first Social Security check.

“Checks? Social Security?” my friend Pepe interrupts. “Where’s your imagination, man? They’ll all be memories. Think big. 2050: the year he takes a sabbatical on Saturn.”

I’m thinking small. I gaze at his body, so perfectly formed, so perfectly innocent. It has yet to be written on. I look at his knee and wonder where will be the little mark that records his first too-­hard slide into second base.

The Washington Post, June 28, 1985

About this edition

• Publisher: Forum Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1984825488
• ISBN 13: 9781984825483
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Krauthammer Daniel