Knights Hospitaller

It seems to come around so quickly.  Dictionary day.
The words my finger fell on seems like a set up, but it is not.  I did the usual closing of eyes and turning the dictionary this way and that, so I did not know which way it was up.  I then pointed and saw what word it was.
Today’s word was Knight Hospitaller.  A Hospitaler was a member of a charitable religious order while a Knight Hospitaller was member of an order of military monks founded at Jerusalem in 1048.
Its patron saint was an obscure John and later was changed to John the Baptist.  It is where St Johns ambulance came from apparently.
It is funny but one side of the organization was involved in looking after and caring for casualties, while the knight side caused casualties. They were a catholic order very much alive during the crusades.
I found it interesting reading up on the history of the organization.  It seems to me to have been very much a product of its time.  I can not imagine such an organization being accepted these days, but I reckon one side of it was great.
I guess I think that as I am a “care for” type person.  I will definitely fight to provide security but that is a secondary side of my nature.  I am a great believer in peace from winning rather than peace from refusing to fight and have what matters to me taken from me.
So in this day and age it seems to me care is big on the radar because forces are around who will rob, wound and kill many to further their own aims.  That is a worst-case scenario but what I hold dear has been eroded.  Not all at once but in such a way to suddenly realize that I have sacrificed important freedoms in the name of peace.  It is like a peace at any cost.
I think I can blame the Knights Hospitaller for that line of thought.  But I guess that is why I am into stamps too.  I enjoy studying the history of something.