If you have looked through Fiddlerman's video lessons, you'll see you can get to playing tunes pretty darn quickly.  And those are lessons.  The internet is also full of lessons.  Lessons are something you do not lack, joehelsing.  Plenty of them are around just waiting for you and your violin.

Finding a *good* teacher can definitely speed up the learning process and save you some time and frustration.  But many good players on almost every instrument in the world have been self-taught, too.  Teachers can save you some headaches and dead-ends.  But in the end, only you can make yourself learn, and it can happen with or without getting actual sessions with a live teacher in person.  More of what you can do is up to you than is ever up to any teacher.

A teacher can help by explaining things and showing you exercises to work on certain skills that they, from experience, know will be useful.  They can help by selecting pieces and exercises that may challenge you a bit more than you might challenge yourself without their influence.  But the work of applying it and developing those skills is always just you.  It may take you longer without a teacher, but you can get there. 

Another thing is that not all teachers are good, or may not be good for every student.  Some can be more discouraging than encouraging, or may obsess over points that it could really be better for a particular person to skip over for now and come back to.  I think that a bad teacher or one where you and the teacher just don't have the right "chemistry" for them to be your teacher can do more harm to a beginner than going it alone without a teacher would have.