This is just a marker for a future fuller post.

Enemy propagandists sometimes say that self-reliance is a way of being alienated.  They say it is John-Galt style hostility.

Wrong.

Self-reliance is about love.

Partly it is about love in the masculine mode.  Like C.S. Lewis said, men show love by reducing the burden they impose on you.

But mostly it is about love for the things in this world God has created.  I grow tomatoes not because I want to eliminate grocers from the world, but because I want that fuller relationship with sun and soil and plant.

Homeschooling is about fuller relations between parents and children.

Self-reliance is family love and love for creation.