As a happy 24-year-old I was thinking of finding a bride and starting a family. I had a job and though I had no money, the job would provide. World War II was over; I no longer had to fear the draft as an obstacle. Plenty available young women shared my ambitions, not directed at me, but they were out there. It was the normal and accepted way of life. No better way has been devised in thousands of years to rear children for future generations than through the commitment of a man and a woman in marriage.

The attitude among many people today is far different. Some couples prefer to live together without benefit of marriage, children be damned. Some couples delay having children so long that the woman is on the verge of being past child bearing age.

Still further from ideas of my youth are those of college students whose main political concern is same-sex marriage. Such word modifiers as same-sex simply corrupt our language. Marriage has always meant the union of a man and a woman. Here we have a conundrum. On one hand couples that ought to marry reject the idea, while on the other. some who have no right to do so demand it.

Aside from the marriage question, an over-the-hill professional athlete claims to be homosexual and he is applauded for his courage by the media and others. I remember when a person’s private life was kept private.

Here’s another upside down thing. The Affordable Health Care law, i.e. Obama Care, is a gigantic fraud. All who expect cheap or free health care are in for a rude awakening. The cost will be great in many more ways than just money. More of our freedoms bite the dust.

Aside from the damage already done many power-hungry people want constitutional rights only for themselves, for example the right to own fire arms and the right to free speech. The idea that disarming law-abiding citizens will prevent crazy predators from moving into gun-free zones and shooting innocent victims is absurd. The right to free speech may seem intact but consider the politically correct nonsense. This is obviously a scheme to control speech by limiting what may be said and changing the meaning of words. Whatever happened to the proper term illegal alien? It is referred to as undocumented immigrant. Is somebody afraid of insulting an alien?

I want to add just one thing more to my list of failures in our society. Terrorist attacks on civilians have caused much stress on people all over the land. Air travel is probably the most widespread inconvenience and time waster. The most recent attack shut down a whole million-person city for more than a day.

Who could be responsible for such a sorry state of affairs? The majority of Americans usually get what they want. Perhaps they lost sight of what they wanted. It could be that changes in behavior were too subtle for most to recognize. Maybe our public school system is to blame.

I don’t know who turned my world upside down but I have an idea that for whatever reason, too many people have been apathetic.