Photo: AP / Mary Altaffer
After writing an announcement detailing how he had only a few more weeks to live on June 8, Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist for The Washington Post and longtime conservative pundit passed away on Thursday at the age of 68.
The Post said the cause was cancer of the small intestine, according to his son, Daniel Krauthammer.
Krauthammer wrote in his farewell letter how 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. 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,” he continued. “I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”
He ended up becoming one of the highest-profile commentators for his generation through his weekly columns, which won a Pulitzer in 1987, along with a number of essays published in prominent magazines.
Krauthammer was also a longtime presence on cable news, especially Fox News.
Krauthammer became a vital voice during the administration of George W. Bush, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks ignited a passion among many neoconservatives to punish the perpetrators while attempting to spread American-styled democracy by removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
However, the Iraq war spiraled out of control instead of Krauthammer's description of it being a "Three Week War" and has caused more than 4,000 U.S. deaths and more than 100,000 Iraqi casualties.
Krauthammer dissented from a number of his fellow conservatives by supporting legalized abortion, stem-cell research, and spoke out against "intelligent design," which he called a “today’s tarted-up version of creationism.”
He was also not shy about expressing his distaste for President Donald Trump, referring to him as a "moral disgrace" during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Krauthammer also said he refused to vote for Trump during 2016 and did not shy away from announcing he did believe the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to help sway the election.
Before he was a media figure, Krauthammer graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed a residency in psychiatry.
During his time at Harvard, Krauthammer was an avid swimmer but had an accident which left him paralyzed from the waist down and required him to use a wheelchair.
Krauthammer once said of his disability, “I don’t like when they make a big thing about it. And the worst thing is when they tell me how courageous I am. That drives me to distraction.”
He later transitioned into writing about politics after his career in medicine, becoming a voice that expressed an explicitly hawkish view on foreign policy issues while criticizing gun control efforts and previously doubting the science behind climate change.
During appearances on Fox News, Krauthammer would decry the "liberal monopoly" of the media, becoming a darling for a number of conservative groups and politicians.
Essayist and critic John Gross wrote in the New York Times on Thursday about how Krauthammer was an expert "controversialist" who always had the “ability to seize on the giveaway quotation or the exquisitely revealing chink in his opponent’s armor.”
Krauthammer said his politics were directly influenced by growing up in the post-Holocaust world with Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Europe.
“It tempers your optimism and your idealism. And it gives you a vision of the world which I think is more restrained, conservative, if you like. You don’t expect that much out of human nature. And you are prepared for the worst.”
-WN.com, Maureen Foody
