Faithfully Yours - Traits that must be reborn

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Published on Sunday, May 14, 2017

Neil Strohschein

The Neepawa Banner

In 1992, Canadian author (and self-confessed freethinker) William Gairdner released the first edition of his book “The War Against the Family.” It was updated in 2007, but the central theme remained the same. In his book, Gairdner argues that to establish absolute control over society, governments must first undermine and ultimately destroy every institution that they perceive to be a threat. Their primary target, according to Gairdner’s book, is the family.

The family, he says, is the one unit in society that governments cannot control. They will try; and some in history have succeeded. But strong families possess two traits that governments don’t always appreciate—they are independent and they are interdependent.

Our communities were founded and built by people who displayed these traits. They settled on tracts of land, built homes, planted crops and gardens and raised animals. What they didn’t need for food, they either sold or shared with their neighbors. They didn’t expect governments to bail them out if they had a crop failure, lost animals to predators or buildings in a fire. They assessed the damage, cleaned up the mess and began to rebuild. Their survival depended on it.

In those days, parents and children worked together. They plowed the land, picked rocks and roots, and looked after the animals. The younger children gathered eggs. The older ones milked cows, slopped pigs and fed chickens. Everyone got involved when it was time to stack hay, stook bundles and thresh the crops. By the age of 14, most farm kids could fill in for a parent who was ill, disabled or who was late getting back from a trip into town. Some never made it past Junior High School—they quit school and went to work full-time on the family farm.

In their spare time, neighbors worked together to build churches and schools, community halls, skating and curling rinks, playgrounds and baseball diamonds. Those who could donated materials. Everyone else donated time and talent—first to building these facilities and then to keeping them in good repair. They did the work themselves, covered the costs themselves and took great pride in what they achieved by working together.

But the greatest gift to their community was given to neighbors in need. Our ancestors didn’t wait to be asked for their help. They went to the needy neighbor and offered to help wherever they could. Their argument was simple: “We’re in this together. We’re here to help each other.”

Pioneer families built their success on independence. They worked hard. They took care of their farms, businesses and aging relatives themselves. They demanded no favors. They expected no help. All they wanted was to be allowed to live as they pleased, do their work and train their children to become productive members of society.

But in harvest season, communities became interdependent. Neighbors came together and worked together to get everyone’s crop in the bin before the first snow arrived. No one expected to be paid for their services. They helped their neighbors and their neighbors, in turn, helped them.

These attitudes are not as prevalent in our day as they were 100 years ago. But it is time for them to be reborn in us and in our children. The government subsides on which we rely cannot last forever. One day, they will disappear. And when that happens, we will have to look after ourselves (be independent) and help our neighbors (be interdependent), just as our ancestors did.

It’s time we learned how to do that now.