War is the Norm

By TIBOR R. MACHAN
Freedom News Service

Most Americans haven't known war, which is very much to the good. I envy them. I envy my own children who have lived in a relatively free and largely peaceful society. I so much wish they could continue to do so.
Yet, it behooves me to remind folks that this isn't by any means the norm. Human history has been replete with armed conflict. Even as recently as the middle of the 20th century, there was a terrible war and it only seems different for most Americans because even when they lost loved ones in the Pacific or European theater, nothing much happened to disturb domestic tranquility. The skies of American cities didn't rain bombs; American homes, be they apartments or houses, weren't turned into rubble; blood didn't flow on American streets, and no one needed to tell children not to pick up anything because it might be a booby trap.
No, this doesn't mean that many Americans didn't experience the consequences of war. But not quite the way in which the rest of the world did in nearly every epoch. I, for example, was born six months prior to the break out of World War II and spent my first five years in a city, Budapest, completely besieged by ferocious armed conflict. Hungary was an ally of Hitler and the Soviets - and in some rare case even the Americans - waged a just war against the country, good and hard.
I remember night after night having to rush to the basement of my mother