Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer

When Mr. Krauthammer died earlier this year, this book enjoyed a new popularity in our library system.  I put it on my "want to read" list and now I've finally read it. 

This is a book of essays about many things including politics, baseball, dogs, and people who influenced him along the way.  I enjoyed a walk down memory lane of sorts.  Essays dealing with the cold war, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and other people and incidents had me saying, "Oh, I remember that!"  I couldn't help but notice the truth of the adage, "the more things change, the more they stay the same."  Some of the issues of the last three decades (abortion, partisan politics, monuments) are still in the forefront of our news broadcasts today - and we still haven't resolved the debates.

I found his essay about Soviet funerals for heads of state compelling.  I'll quote from it here, because my description won't do it justice:

It turns out I'm not the only one to have been chilled by the barrenness of the Soviet way of death.  Shortly after his return from Brezhnev's funeral, Vice President George Bush talked about what had struck him the most.  He mentioned the austere pageantry, the goose-stepping soldiers, the music, "the body being drawn through Red Square - not, incidentally, by horses, but behind an armored personnel carrier. But what struck me most...was the fact that from start to finish there was not one mention of - God.'

Why should that matter? you ask.  After all, many of us are as tepid in our belief as the proverbial Unitarian who believes that there is, at most, one God.  What is wrong with a society that believes in none?  The usual answer follows the lines of an observation by Arthur Schlesinger (and others) that "the declining faith in the supernatural has been accompanied by the rise of the monstrous totalitarian creeds of the 20th century." Or as Chesterton put it, "The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they thereafter believe in anything."  In this century, "anything" has included Hitler, Stalin and Mao, authors of the great genocidal madnesses of our time.  

Page 219 paragraphs 1 and 2

I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to you.  It was thoughtful and well written.  I didn't agree with everything Mr. Krauthammer believed, but I think that's a good thing.  He challenged my thinking and that's definitely worthwhile.  

Until next time...