There have been too many wars in my lifetime, which has included the latter part of the twentieth century.
My father was a career military man.
To our family, this meant that he spent great amounts of time away from the family.
He didn't see me until I was eighteen months old.
This may have meant a lack of parental love.
Actually, many military men, including my father, try to make up for this deficit by being especially attentive to their children when they are home.
But it's a challenge above the normal.
If I look at my lifetime, I see an increase in promiscuity and an increase in violence, especially in my hometown of San Diego.
I was raised in San Diego when it was a large country town, and I lived in the small suburb of Lemon Grove.
Everybody knew everybody though my family was not particularly sociable.
My mother was very focused on child rearing, as she ended up with five kids.
My dad, like most military lifers, was very self-controlled and stoical.
Showing emotion was not an option for him.
He entered the navy when he was seventeen years old and he learned to hide his emotions of fear, pain and intense happiness.
Emotions are not welcome in fox holes, though his safe places were the cubbyholes of ships.
All of us kids followed suit by being overly controlled and somewhat distant from others.
I've always looked at other cultures such as the Russian or Italian as being over-the-top for showing emotion.
I was an extremely focused teenager with top grades and many extracurricular activities.
The culture before the sixties strikes me as being very controlled with sexual attitudes not too far from Victorian, and family roles extremely well defined.
If you looked good to the neighbors, then you were alright.
The sixties busted this wide open with its emphasis on free love and drugs.
Both of these phenomenon had been around prior to the sixties, but were not nearly as pronounced.
Is it any surprise that this happened just after World War II? During wartime, soldiers were given free alcohol and cigarettes.
Now they are not, as rehabilitation is stressed.
Back on the home front, lonely woman sought out other men for company, and you couldn't blame them, what with the long absences of their husbands.
Not all did this, most notably my mother, who was a good Christian woman.
When unmarried soldiers returned home, and when they return home now, they frequently engage in brief liaisons which lack permanency because of the soldiers' inevitable return to war.
In Vietnam, from what I have been told, there was much marijuana smoking.
I don't blame the soldier who was fighting in what became an unpopular war.
Also, most of the soldiers in this war were drafted, and many didn't want to be there.
That's very stressful.
Drugs entered our society overseas, and haven't left yet.
Promiscuity also entered and still prevails.
It's considered common practice to be intimate outside of marriage, and pregnancies within these relationships are acceptable.
I'm not saying these practices are acceptable.
During my childhood, my father, family and friends, drank beer together, smoked and told stories about their wartime experiences.
They were just being "men".
But what about my father's daughter, myself, who later became an alcoholic? I'm not saying that he was in anyway to blame, but what effect might it have had on me if alcohol was forbidden in the home? My mother was a teetotaler, and didn't drink at all.
This was the best influence she could have been on me.
But, and this is big, she was angry a lot.
This brings me to the final result of wars.
As the Bible says, "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword".
In my family circle, my mother often tired from raising small children alone and frequently lost her temper.
My father often became almost uncontrollably angry due to his own childhood combined with the stresses of war and witnessing so much violence.
As a result, I have family members with bad tempers and other addictions.
On the societal level, since 1945 we have been in wars continually.
And thank God we have those who will fight them.
I lost a third cousin in the Korean war and his wife tried four more times to find a husband, but didn't stay with any of them.
A paid military is a much better idea because the soldiers know what they're in for and accept the stresses.
They are also paid better than soldiers used to be, especially draftees.
We have justified many of these wars by saying we were defending helpless people.
This is true, but, on the otherhand, all wars are justified in one way of the other.
In the war in Iraq, we invaded.
I'm not interested in whether we won or not, which is a subject of great debate about Vietnam, Korea and Iraq.
I'm sure there are many people in these countries who are mighty thankful we came to their assistance, such as, the south Koreans, many of whom are Christians, the Vietnamese who are safely relocated to the United States, and the Iraquis' who have become US citizens or who are living in Iraq no longer under the rod of Hussein.
But what do constant wars do to a society? Look at the violence in the Civil Rights movement, which was fortunately influenced by Martin Luther King's views on nonviolence.
Look at the riots in our cities; look at the crime which is possibly the highest in the world (other than Great Britain); and look at the sex traffic and enslavement in our drug and prostitution trades.
I'm not sure if there is any excuse good enough for war, not to speak of the destruction it wreaks on the landscapes where wars are fought.
Atomic war increases this destruction exponentially.
My father was a career military man.
To our family, this meant that he spent great amounts of time away from the family.
He didn't see me until I was eighteen months old.
This may have meant a lack of parental love.
Actually, many military men, including my father, try to make up for this deficit by being especially attentive to their children when they are home.
But it's a challenge above the normal.
If I look at my lifetime, I see an increase in promiscuity and an increase in violence, especially in my hometown of San Diego.
I was raised in San Diego when it was a large country town, and I lived in the small suburb of Lemon Grove.
Everybody knew everybody though my family was not particularly sociable.
My mother was very focused on child rearing, as she ended up with five kids.
My dad, like most military lifers, was very self-controlled and stoical.
Showing emotion was not an option for him.
He entered the navy when he was seventeen years old and he learned to hide his emotions of fear, pain and intense happiness.
Emotions are not welcome in fox holes, though his safe places were the cubbyholes of ships.
All of us kids followed suit by being overly controlled and somewhat distant from others.
I've always looked at other cultures such as the Russian or Italian as being over-the-top for showing emotion.
I was an extremely focused teenager with top grades and many extracurricular activities.
The culture before the sixties strikes me as being very controlled with sexual attitudes not too far from Victorian, and family roles extremely well defined.
If you looked good to the neighbors, then you were alright.
The sixties busted this wide open with its emphasis on free love and drugs.
Both of these phenomenon had been around prior to the sixties, but were not nearly as pronounced.
Is it any surprise that this happened just after World War II? During wartime, soldiers were given free alcohol and cigarettes.
Now they are not, as rehabilitation is stressed.
Back on the home front, lonely woman sought out other men for company, and you couldn't blame them, what with the long absences of their husbands.
Not all did this, most notably my mother, who was a good Christian woman.
When unmarried soldiers returned home, and when they return home now, they frequently engage in brief liaisons which lack permanency because of the soldiers' inevitable return to war.
In Vietnam, from what I have been told, there was much marijuana smoking.
I don't blame the soldier who was fighting in what became an unpopular war.
Also, most of the soldiers in this war were drafted, and many didn't want to be there.
That's very stressful.
Drugs entered our society overseas, and haven't left yet.
Promiscuity also entered and still prevails.
It's considered common practice to be intimate outside of marriage, and pregnancies within these relationships are acceptable.
I'm not saying these practices are acceptable.
During my childhood, my father, family and friends, drank beer together, smoked and told stories about their wartime experiences.
They were just being "men".
But what about my father's daughter, myself, who later became an alcoholic? I'm not saying that he was in anyway to blame, but what effect might it have had on me if alcohol was forbidden in the home? My mother was a teetotaler, and didn't drink at all.
This was the best influence she could have been on me.
But, and this is big, she was angry a lot.
This brings me to the final result of wars.
As the Bible says, "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword".
In my family circle, my mother often tired from raising small children alone and frequently lost her temper.
My father often became almost uncontrollably angry due to his own childhood combined with the stresses of war and witnessing so much violence.
As a result, I have family members with bad tempers and other addictions.
On the societal level, since 1945 we have been in wars continually.
And thank God we have those who will fight them.
I lost a third cousin in the Korean war and his wife tried four more times to find a husband, but didn't stay with any of them.
A paid military is a much better idea because the soldiers know what they're in for and accept the stresses.
They are also paid better than soldiers used to be, especially draftees.
We have justified many of these wars by saying we were defending helpless people.
This is true, but, on the otherhand, all wars are justified in one way of the other.
In the war in Iraq, we invaded.
I'm not interested in whether we won or not, which is a subject of great debate about Vietnam, Korea and Iraq.
I'm sure there are many people in these countries who are mighty thankful we came to their assistance, such as, the south Koreans, many of whom are Christians, the Vietnamese who are safely relocated to the United States, and the Iraquis' who have become US citizens or who are living in Iraq no longer under the rod of Hussein.
But what do constant wars do to a society? Look at the violence in the Civil Rights movement, which was fortunately influenced by Martin Luther King's views on nonviolence.
Look at the riots in our cities; look at the crime which is possibly the highest in the world (other than Great Britain); and look at the sex traffic and enslavement in our drug and prostitution trades.
I'm not sure if there is any excuse good enough for war, not to speak of the destruction it wreaks on the landscapes where wars are fought.
Atomic war increases this destruction exponentially.