The Estimable Dr. Krauthammer

There are very few people in today's world that deserve admiration. I respectfully submit that Charles Krauthammer is one person that does deserve admiration.

I have been a fan of Dr. Krauthammer for some time. I have read his columns from time to time, but I really became a fan watching him on the Fox News Channel. He has become the premier conservative thinker of his generation, in my opinion. He has a practical approach to conservatism. He does not tout the impossible, nor does he let the perfect preclude the good.

He has with a wry sense of humor that he, sometimes, uses as a dart to impale those that refuse to understand the obvious. With all that, he is never boring, nor is he ever mundane. His quiet brilliance cuts to the heart of political thought. He is always right and usually correct.

I use the word brilliance most advisedly. Dr. Krauthammer's undergraduate studies were in economics and political science. For post graduate work he was accepted to Harvard Medical School and Oxford University. He chose Oxford to continue to study economics and political science. He had a change of mind. Returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard.

At that point his life also took a dramatic change. He was an athlete as a young man. But an accident in a swimming pool left him with a spinal cord injury. I had been watching him for months on TV before I realized he was sitting in a wheel chair. He never spoke of his situation. In spite of his difficulty, he managed to stay with his medical school class and graduate. He did an internship in psychiatry and eventually became a practicing psychiatrist. The only time I have heard him talk of his life was in a long interview on Fox with his friend Bret Baier. That interview showed Dr. Krauthammer as a man worth listening to and knowing about.

He left medicine and came back to his first love, politics. He evolved from a liberal in his early years into a solidly logical conservative. If he has an ego, he keeps it well tucked away. But he will back down from no one in a debate. If he cannot win you over by his logic, he will slice and dice you with his wit. As I said, a man to be admired.