BY RUSSELL TURNER
SURVIVAL SKILLS
I have found that one of the greatest lessons that parents can give to their children is the teaching of survival skills. When anyone starts talking about being a survivalist society immediately starts thinking that they are a backwards, uneducated hillbilly that refuses to accept the modern world. While that may be a fair assessment of a small percentage survival skills are disappearing from many Americans today.
I was raised to cherish the idea of being self-reliant and independent. My grandparents were members of our nation’s greatest generation; while their day was a lot different than what we are seeing today, they understood the need for good survival skills. They endured many hard times and for the most part they were on their own, there was little to no public assistance from the government which forced them to become innovative and self-reliant. There has been a lot of talk lately about the dangers of becoming addicted to pain killers and the dependency that comes from the addiction. When you look at it objectively dependency on government can be just as dangerous. Today far too many of our people, when faced with any problem, do not have the ability to deal with it and only know to run to the government to sign up for some program. While I believe that we need a safety net for the truly needy, too many of our people are not using their own abilities to solve their problems. Throughout history countless cultures have endured catastrophes that essentially destroyed their way of life. We often assume that every day will be the same as the day before and tomorrow will be likewise. Catastrophes never happen on a schedule, and they can happen when we least expect it.
My grandparents had the ability to withstand hardships, but the people of today have no idea how to survive when things get rough. All it would take would be a rock falling from space or a massive solar flare or some enemy setting off a nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere to cause a breakdown of our society. People in the past had the discipline to confront their problems without marching in the streets rioting, burning and killing each other. No government could make things normal if these kinds of things happen. It is a sad fact that our elected officials can not even balance our nation’s checkbook, the 20 + trillion-dollar national debt is proof.
There are individuals in our country who do have the survival skills and the ability to get things done, and we have a crop of politicians who have no problem putting more tax burdens upon them to keep the party going for a little longer. One definition of socialism is the plundering of the productive to give to the unaccountable. Eventually the productive become less and less productive; this is exactly what caused the demise of the Roman empire. The Roman’s government had become corrupt with cronyism and people only concerned with their own political power, just like what we are seeing in America today. There is a theory that all societies can only elevate themselves to a certain point, then they will destroy themselves. Most people have no idea of the dangers we face, if our power grid were to go down for a couple of weeks the death toll would be unbelievable. With no survival skills and little discipline our major cities would become complete anarchy. While we spend billions on education in the government schools, we have neglected teaching our children morals, discipline and the basic survival skills all of us should know. Government can be a help when disaster happens, but our survival is dependent upon the average citizen of this country.
Comments
Post a Comment