The former Democrat who emerged as a leading conservative voice influenced American thought through words and inspired millions by living an exemplary life.
Charles Krauthammer, known to causal viewers as a sharp-minded, wheelchair-bound conservative Fox News contributor, proved each day of his life that nothing can hold back American greatness. As the 68-year-old goes into that good night, his adherence to a code that values free, honest and open debate stands the test of time.
In an open letter to friends, colleagues and the general public, Krauthammer recently revealed that he had only weeks remaining. Notably missing as a Fox News contributor and political analyst for nearly a year, he had been recovering from a tumor that was removed from his abdomen. The surgery set off a series of secondary health challenges and the now-aggressive cancer has returned.
“My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over,” Krauthammer writes.
His encompassing letter resonates with the firm dignity that molded him into one of journalism’s giants.
“I wish to thank my doctors and caregivers, whose efforts have been magnificent. My dear friends, who have given me a lifetime of memories and whose support has sustained me through these difficult months. And all of my partners at The Washington Post, Fox News, and Crown Publishing,” his farewell letter states. “Lastly, I thank my colleagues, my readers, and my viewers, who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life’s work. I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.”
A young Charles Krauthammer was a rising star. He was the picture of health, on track to graduate from Harvard Medical, Class of 1975. Flowing long dark hair, the strapping 6’1” med student suffered a freak accident that would profoundly alter the course of his life.
After returning from a freshmen spring break to Bermuda, Krauthammer and a friend plunged into a campus pool. His head struck the pool floor, severing his spine. His dream of becoming a surgeon was dashed. Krauthammer barely survived drowning, and would never walk again.
“There were two books on the side of the pool when they picked up my effects,” he recalls. “One was The Anatomy of the Spinal Cord and the other’s Man’s Fate by Andre Malraux. Quite a choice.”
After more than a year in recovery from the spinal cord injury, Krauthammer returned to Harvard and shifted his focus to psychiatry. He contributes to the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III” — or DSM III. He completed his goal at Harvard despite paralysis.
His psychiatric work earned him a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. He rose to chief resident before relocating to Washington, D.C., to work for the Carter Administration and later serve as speech writer for Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale.
In the 1980s, Krauthammer became a political columnist for flagship publications such as The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, Time, Inside Washington and concludes his career as a syndicated columnist, Fox News contributor and Pulitzer Prize winner. Suffering a debilitating injury that would have left many emotional crippled. Krauthammer’s intellect ran fast and achieved.
“Charles has been a profound source of personal and intellectual inspiration for all of us at Fox News,” Rupert Murdoch said after learning of his imminent demise. “His always principled stand on the most important issues of our time has been a guiding star in an often turbulent world, a world that has too many superficial thinkers vulnerable to the ebb and flow of fashion, and a world that, unfortunately, has only one Charles Krauthammer.”
Modest and grateful for the rich life he built through determination, Krauthammer’s parting words serve as a measure of dignity.
“I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life – full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”
~ Conservative Zone
My question is – It is a proven fact that doctors can NOT cure their own cancer. How can anyone else then believe that doctors can cure cancer? A ridiculous supposition. Krauthammer, should have, & still can, do his own research into curing cancer. All it takes is guts! I know this from my own experience with the illness. I wish him good luck in facing the ultimate terror of death, as death is part of life. Right?
Charles Krauthammer is one of the greatest men I know. He supported truth and not just any political party. He will be greatly missed by all. Thanks, Charles!
Being a christian and maybe not accepted in this post,I just want to say I pray this man will if he has not already
made his peace with God he will before it is too late, it would be a tragic thing to lose him to the devil, Christians
pray for him, please.
It would be most illuminating to read an account, in his own words, of Mr. Krauthammer’s journey from liberal to conservative – what were the events that moved him?
I wish him joy in the adventure of the journey that now lies before him. No doubt, he will continue to learn and grow with the same courage and strength he has shown in this life!
The world will miss Dr. Charles Krauthammer. I didn’t always agree with him. Sometimes he wasn’t quite conservative enough for me. He was a former Democrat, after all. ;0) But I could always respect him and his opinions because he was never demeaning in expressing them. He never called names or took cheap shots. His analysis was always based on the issues and on his solid thought about the issues. And he wouldn’t hold back on criticizing someone he liked if he thought they were wrong or praising someone he disliked if he thought they did something good. That’s rare in a ‘journalist’ in this day and age. He may have been in a wheelchair for most of his adult life, but he strode like a giant through the world of political journalism. Even his fellow journalists on both sides of the aisle will miss him. That’s how well he was liked. His was, indeed, a life well lived. And if there is a heaven, I have no doubt that when he gets there, he will start right in on critiquing how the place is run. And he will usually be right.
Our dear Charles, You have been such an inspiration to my husband and me over the years. You have challenged me to pursue the facts of any given topic, to look at both sides and become informed. Your wit was always on spot. We stopped everything to watch you on Fox so as to learn what your thoughts were for the day’s news. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. You will be missed, but always remembered.
I find him to be one of the most intelligent people on television and a classic example of how a gentleman and a professional should behave and present themselves. He doesn’t resort to subterfuge or fabrications or delve into emotional or theatrical outbursts on social media like lesser people. He gets right to the truth and facts of any matter and always keeps any discussion on track. Whatever the issue or story being presented, covered, and talked about, his thoughts are often the most interesting and revealing. I’ve always appreciated his contribution to any discussion as his thoughts, ideas and perspectives are the ones I most want to hear and always appreciate. In a world of educated people in suites and formality, he’s the Rock Star.
Farewell, and God bless you. I’m going to miss your commentaries. I hope you have given serious thought to what is on the other side of death. Heaven or Hell awaits you, and you will be in one of those places for eternity. If you want to go to heaven, you will need to turn to Jesus, the Son of God, to forgive your sins. No one who is not perfect can enter Heaven, and no person can achieve that standard. However, God has punished Jesus instead of you, by putting Him to death on a Roman cross. He loves you so much, that He took your punishment, and He offers you everlasting life in Heaven if you only pray to Him and ask for it. Confess to Him that you are a sinner, and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior. That means putting Him in charge of your life, and accepting His payment of your debt to God. It’s like accepting a presidential pardon after committing a crime. You, as all of us, have broken God’s law, but He offers you a pardon, and complete forgiveness. All you have to do is tell Him you accept it. I hope to see you in Heaven someday.
Very well said. I pray he has received your witness and will take Jesus to heart! Jesus Himself said
no one comes to the Father except through Him.
Your rise to the top through all of your trials and tribulations is an inspiration to all of us to do better. I bid you farewell and may your journey to the next life be dynamic, just as your life was here.
You will be remembered!
I am an author who has uniquely studied how the mind thinks according to the avoidance of God’s presence. My 40 years of studies are very unique and resisted now in books at ItsAllBoutCorruption.com We are living in a decadent civilization seen in America at the highest mental illness and suicide level in 30 years. Opiod deaths is just one dilemma. Another is school killings. There has yet to be a finger pointing at the cause or even the need to recondition the seriousness of this dilemma of an unconsciousness to a higher power as essential. This decent man had bad parenting to start to not show guidelines that one does not ever dive into a pool. Then he took up law which is a pathetic profession that leads to a journey involving so much corruption and evil from money, power and greed. Then into the media and writing books never to expose this evil-ution since 1910. This decent man thrived on the social feelings he lived from but not never broke through his lifestyle as a victim of a blanket of decadence which determined his pain and suffering and outcome of an earlier death from cancer. Lifestyles reckon with insanity which thrived on his money, power and greed. He still was a decent man and he should be a good example to learn from how to not be made to think their way and just be another victim. I write all about the solutions and cures at ItsAllAboutCorruption.com to turn America around. President Trump had my books sent to him in 2015. He is doing great.
God speed you will be greatly missed
As O’Reilly would say, Mr. Charles was definitely “old school”! My prayers are with you as you start a different life in paradise. God bless.
Charles should not give up so easily. He should not presume that medical doctors, even those who specialize in oncology, know everything. He should search for other opinions, pursue other treatments, and ask for the prayers of faithful Christians on his behalf. I have known MANY, whose lives were predicted by doctors to be virtually over because of “incurable” cancer, who were completely cured after a myriad of concerned Christians prayed for them. In just one case a 37 year old mother of children of ages 6 and 8 was told that she had a terminal brain tumor. She had been a close friend of my daughter in childhood. Members of churches all around prayed earnestly for her. On her next visit to M.D. Anderson Hospital, a team of 12 doctors examined her and found that she no longer had even a trace of the cancer. One of the elders in our congregation had a serious cancer behind his nose which was spreading. A multitude of prayers were offered for him, he was given good care by doctors at M.D. Anderson, and is now reported to be cancer-free. My daughter practices homeopathy, which preceded the alipathy we see in our mainstream medical practitioners of today. Homeopathy operates by calling up and reinforcing the body’s own defenses to problems and very often cures a malady more safely and quickly than “modern” medicine. Some doctors practice BOTH Homeopathy AND Alipathy, and currently alipaths have discovered “IMMUNOTHERAPY,” which utilizes the long-used homeopathy approach. There is currently an advertisement on TV for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America chain in which a case history is described in which a 40s old patient with a severe cancer went through all of the usual alipathic treatments without success and then was cured completely by an immunotherapy technique, which used the body’s own defenses, as homeopathy does to provide the cure.
America NEEDS Charles Krauthamer!!! While I do not agree with everything he has said, he is an HONEST commentator, and the country needs him to help further God’s work in restoring our nation to the God-fearing nation we have strayed from and destroy the God-denying philosophies now endeavoring to destroy our nation. We have been fighting these God-deniers for at least the last 120 years, but have let them slip into our schools and media and undermine future generations. We used to recognize these tricks for taking over a country (Socialists, Nazis, Marxists, Leninists, Communists, Atheists, Secular Humanists, Nihilists, and followers of Nietzhe and Darwin. God is still in control and I pray that he will save us from going backward with these errors [compare West Germany to East Germany, South Korea to North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela (fell so quickly from a very prosperous capitalist country into the communism now causing the widespread famine and poverty there now)].
Note also that each of these countries were taken over by the governments taking away their right to protect themselves with firearms. It is reported that a Japanese warlord during WW2 advised against attacking America because, he said, “Everyone in America has a gun.”
Use that magnificent brain, Charles to explore more avenues. Regardless, you will always be remembered with gratitude!
God Bless you in your journey, you will be missed greatly.
Farewell to a great intellect and thoughtful person who opted for reason over propaganda. However I do want to observe that Charles Krauthammer’s story of his early injuries and imminent demise illustrate the need for all people to have access to good health-care. We may not all equal Krauthammer’s achievements or intellect, but we all deserve to be seen as worthy of the best health care possible.
CK was truly a renaissance man and a class act. He will be missed but not forgotten. Rest in peace my friend with God’s blessing.
We, the entire U.S., can ill afford the loss of this man. I watched him, each day @Fox news, always looked forward to it, and felt better afterwards. And as you look down upon us in your afterlife, Charles, know that you are missed by many!
Tomorrow’s Cancer Cures Today By Allan Spreen, M.D. on Amazon Books. Good Stuff, Never be afraid to try!!!!!!!!