It’s pigskin season right now but hoop season is just around the corner.

The Caveliers are scheduled to open their regular season on November 6 against Campbell followed by Coppin State on November 11.

This year’s roster is a mixed bag. There are returning players, transfer portal players, recruits, and even a homegrown walk-on in Carter Lang. So it’s anyone’s guess on how this season will materialize.

One thing is for sure though, Bennett will have them ready for the opening tip-off.

A game that UVA fans are looking forward to will be played in Baltimore on November 15 against perennial powerhouse Villanova.

Then, on November 21, they travel to the Bahamas for the Bahamas Mar Hoops Championship where they will face either Tennessee, St Johns or Baylor. Hopefully, they return home with the Championship Trophy.

In all, the Wahoos will have a busy November having seven games on their schedule.

I’m looking forward to the opening game tip-off not only because last season is behind us but I’m anxious to see who Bennett will have as his starting five.

Go Hoos!

The post UVA 2024 – 2025 Basketball Season is Fast Approaching appeared first on Dr. E.C. Fulcher, Jr..

As we have seen, the Democratic Party started out as the big business, whites only, small central government party.  There were Progressives (as they were called before 1917) but those people tended to be on the Republican side of the aisle.  Theodore Roosevelt was considered a Progressive and he was a Republican.  Woodrow Wilson was considered Conservative, and he was a Democrat.  But that all changed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and the 1935 relief act. Brief Description (FDR signs Emergency Relief Appropriation Act – HISTORY.)

To understand what happened, you have to look at what happened in Russia in 1917.  There was a revolution.  Actually, there were a series of revolutions: the Tsar was overthrown; the Mensheviks took power; the Bolsheviks overthrew the Mensheviks and established a Marxist state run by a triumvirate of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.  While Lenin and Trotsky were working towards the creation of a Communist/Marxist state, Stalin was working behind the scenes to take full power.  He made his move when Lenin died.  He ousted Trotsky and assumed complete control of the Russian Communist Party. 

Books have been written about what Stalin did and the millions he murdered in his quest for power.  One of the best was written by Trotsky before his assassination in Mexico in August of 1940.  The upshot of the whole thing was that Stalin was NOT a Marxist/Communist.  He was one of the Reactionaries that Marx warned about in the Communist Manifesto.  He basically reinstated Tsarist policies under the guise of Communism and made himself the sole, unquestioned ruler of the reconstituted U.S.S.R. (The Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics).  The old-timers knew what he had done.  My grandparents and their friends who fled the 1912 revolution in Russia called Stalin “The Red Tsar”.  He hid his totalitarianism behind the façade of communist jargon.  What the Left, the media, and the pundits are all spouting today are not Marxist principles but Stalinist ones.

Now, into that mishmash, we have to throw in a little American Exceptionalism. 

Americans have a way of adapting European concepts to fit themselves in a totally unique way.  There are some politicians who try to deny this, but a simple reading of world history will put the lie to them.  Americans broke from England with its King and parliamentary style of government and created one with a revolving President and an offsetting Congress and Supreme Court.  They took the Leftist ideas coming out of the Soviet Union and adapted them to the American Experience.  All worker’s jobs in the USSR were protected.  There was no unemployment because the government found you a job whether you liked it or not.  Millions died in Soviet Government-owned factories, worked to death and Stalin simply murdered anyone who tried to tell about it.  It was years before the truth of what was happening behind his Iron Curtain, as Winston Churchill called it, came out.

But what FDR did with the 1935 bill was add protection to the unemployed, something that was totally anathema to the Marxist concept.  Yes, the US Government established a work program, the WPA, but there were some people who did not or could not work.  In Marxist theory, these people should have been allowed to die off.  They would become the collateral damage of establishing a new social order, as one former American President described them.  By extending this protection to non-workers, FDR created a class of individuals who were dependent on the Government for their sustenance without contributing to the fund from which that sustenance derived. Some may think this is great, it will provide for those that can’t provide for themselves. Well, consider this story that was told to me…..

A mouse is placed in a glass jar filled with its favorite grain, corn. He thinks to himself, this is Amazing! I don’t have to search for food any longer, fearing for my life, wondering whether I will starve or not. So the mouse beings to eat freely whenever he wants. As time goes on, he begins to taste some things that he doesn’t necessarily like, but hey, there is still plenty of corn, so he dismisses the things he doesn’t like and continues to eat the free corn. More time passes and now the mouse is at the bottom of the glass jar and he finds nothing but dirt, rock, and weeds. No more corn. Then the mouse realizes that he is at the bottom of the jar and cannot even climb out to go find food for himself. Then one day, some corn is dropped into the jar. He thinks I am saved, I have corn to eat. But the corn does not come when he wants. Now he realizes that the food will only come when someone drops it into the jar, otherwise, he has nothing to eat. At that moment, he begins to think that he is doomed because he is now at the mercy of someone else for his food and he is no longer able to forge for himself, so if no one drops corn into the jar, he will surely starve to death.

I ask, what does this sound like to you? What do you think this will create?

This created the underclass that Marx warned about, a class of non-workers that Politicians would keep subservient to them in order to ensure their elections.  But to what end?  Marx called the politicians who used this subservient class, Reactionaries because they were using their political power to return the government/society to something that had gone before and was not progressing towards the sought-after Communist utopia.  But just what is it that the people who run the Democratic Party want to return to?

For Stalin, the only kind of Totalitarian government they knew was the Tsar.  Remember, they had been ruled by one family since the 1600s, yet the first Tsar was Ivan the Terrible, and he took control in 1547.  Europe had seen various families controlling the governments of vast regions of the continent: Frederick III, a Habsburg, was confirmed the first Holy Roman Emperor in 1452.  The last Habsburg Emperor, Frans Joseph died in 1916.  At one point in European history, there was a Habsburg on virtually every throne in Europe except England.  The Prussian states, which eventually became Germany had the Hohenzollerns.  France had the Bourbons.  England had the Plantagenets, Stuarts, and others.  So, when we look at the history of European Totalitarians, the “Left” has numerous examples of ruling families to emulate in the New World Order.

But, what about America?  We have never had a ruling family.  But, we have had people who knew how to rule on the same level of subjugation.  Remember Andrew Jackson and his plantation?  Just look at Cuba and Venezuela.  The Castros, hiding behind the façade of communism/socialism have basically reinstated the old Colonial paradigm with themselves as the rulers over a captive population, Venezuela, the same.  The colonial paradigm works as long as the conquered colonials are kept a step or two above the level of desperation.  Only desperate people revolt. 

In America, the paradigm is the Plantation, and as we have seen from history 1620-1865, the Plantation system works.  It wasn’t the slaves who rebelled and started the Civil War.  It was the plantations’ economic competitors in the North.  On a plantation, you had masters and slaves.  The slaves worked to provide the master with things to sell (cotton or tobacco); the master would sell those commodities and then provide the slaves with what they needed to live from clothes to food to shelter to medical. 

In my humble opinion, the Democratic Party is a party of Reactionary elites who are trying to re-establish a national plantation with themselves as the masters and the rest of us as their slaves.  The middle-class, the new proletariat, the workers are being taxed with ever higher and higher taxes to get them used to the government taking all and then giving back just what the proletariat needs to be a step or three above the survival level.  They are taking the money, now, and rather than redistributing it among the workers, they are giving it to the non-workers only because they have to have a place to put it.  Once they achieve their goals and convert the working middle class into their slaves, they can get rid of those on welfare, just as Venezuela has done by either allowing them to starve or run away.  But in all honesty, there is nowhere else to run.  Anyone on welfare today will become the collateral damage of tomorrow when they are no longer needed to vote the Democratic elite into power because once the Reactionary Elite has achieved that level of power, elections will no longer be necessary or will be so controlled as to be meaningless.  Stalin had elections.  He always won.  One day, in the not too distant future, we will have elections here in America and the Democrats will always win as will a couple of Republican flunkies just to make the corrupt elections seem honest.

But the Democrats will be in for a big surprise.  They have ignored the Bible and the last day prophesies.  As the Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky triumvirate, or the Pompey, Crassus, Caesar triumvirate, or the triumvirate of Octavianus, Antony, and Lepidus, someone will emerge from the shadows to assume supreme power with an angel of Satan, or Satan himself empowering him.  And he or she will rule until the Saints of God return in their power to establish the millennium.  Consider these scriptures….

Revelation 6:2-8 “(2) And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. (3) And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. (4) And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. (5) And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. (6) And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. (7) And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. (8) And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

Now with those verses in mind, take a look around the world today, and hopefully, your eyes will be opened.

Written by Eric B. Ruark and Tanya J. Tillman

The post The History of Politics appeared first on Dr. E.C. Fulcher, Jr..

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! was the clarion call of the Marxist/Communist party.  Note the word WORKERS.  Marx’s entire philosophy hinged on the belief that the proletariat, the wage-slaves, from around the world would unite in one great revolution and create the ultimate Communist utopia.  There was no room for what we call “welfare” in his system.  He considered non-workers scum (his word not mine) and warned against this non-laboring class of people being swept up into the revolution as the hired thugs (his word, not mine) of a Reactionary Elite.

In Marxist philosophy, there are four words that you really have to key on: Proletariat, Bourgeoise, Capitalist, and Reactionary. 

The Proletariat were the workers, the wage-slaves, the field hands of the Bourgeoise elite.  Capitalists were the owners of the corporations, companies, and businesses that employed the Proletariat.  With Bourgeoise, think middle-class in today’s terms, lower-end capitalists, small business owners who employed a handful of people.  Reactionaries were people who wanted to keep and return to the society from which the Marxists were rebelling.

Reactionaries wanted to keep their serfs and wage-slaves; the Bourgeoise wanted to keep the business that lined their pockets with money and let them lead a good life; the Capitalists wanted to keep control of their corporations.

According to Marx, these three groups denied the Proletariat the right to receive the proper compensation for their labor.  For Marx, it centered around who owned the means of production.

Think of a company, any company that makes a Billion Dollars a year. Say they make a Widget.  The president of the company makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.  The company’s executives make huge amounts of money but not as much as the president.  And the workers who actually make the Widget get an hourly wage.  If there is a huge demand for Widgets in a particular year, the president and the executives all receive bonuses.  And the workers continue to make their hourly wage.

According to Marx, the people who actually made the Widget should receive the financial benefit not those at the top.  He argued that the Billion Dollars should be equally divided among ALL the employees in that company and not shared only at the top.  In his world, it was a sin that the Capitalists were living high on the hog off the blood, sweat, and tears of the common laborer.  It was the laborer who invested his heartbeats in making that Widget and therefore really owned the Widget and should reap the benefits from its sale.

Expanding that to the national and then the world level, since the Proletariat owned the means of production for everything, they should all share equally in the rewards for literally making everything.  Stop and think for a moment.  Is there anything that you use, wear or eat that is not made, handled, or grown by someone else?

Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity!  Marx raised the whole idea of Communism to a kind of religion, as well he should since he stole the whole idea from the Bible.  But wait, you say, Communism is atheistic.  There is no God in Communism.  Marx called religion the “opiate of the people”.  In the Communist Manifesto, he literally dismisses religion in one line as not worthy of even being discussed.  He had to because anyone who seriously read the Bible would see Marx was a fraud.  He took God’s plan for his chosen people and then substituted the State for God.  And with that substitution, he doomed Communism to failure.

What, you don’t believe me?  Acts 2:44-45 “And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”

And

Acts 4:34-35 “Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.”  

Can someone say, “Commune?” 

The God of the Bible is a totalitarian who favors communism/socialism for His followers.  The first law is that God comes first in everything.  If you put God first, you almost automatically become a Communist.  You work to please God, not yourself.  You give God all that you make.  And since you have given all, God, who knows all, gives you back what you need.  And what do you need?  The Bible says, 1 Timothy 6:8 “And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.”.  Everything else is vanity.  Notice that the Bible didn’t say “with Chateau Briand and Gucci let us be therewith content.”  If you don’t believe me about all being vanity, read Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 2:24 – There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.

Ecclesiastes 5:19 – Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat therefor, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.

And then there are all the verses about a man enjoying the fruits of his labor.  Grab a Concordance from the Library (when one opens again), or download a Bible App and search the words “fruit”, “labour”, “work” and their various variations and you will be shocked at how many talk about the laborer getting the full benefit from his labor:

Psalm 128:2 – For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.

Proverbs 14:23 – In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.

But, as Marx supposed, how can a laborer enjoy the fruits of his labor if there is someone there to take them from him?  And then you have the nail-in-the-coffin (so to speak): 2 Th 3:10 – “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”  If you don’t work, you don’t eat.  Could you be any more Marxist than that?

If you read a biography of Marx, you will discover that he was a student of Fredrich Hegel’s philosophy and adopted his dialectical method to criticize established society, politics, and religion from a leftist perspective.  It was this dialectical method that led him to develop an abject dislike for organized religion which he blamed God for.  He, therefore, took what the Bible had to say about labor and took God out of the picture, substituting the State for God.  But he forgot about human nature, and that’s where non-God-Centered communism breaks down.  A person might feel moved to give ALL to God, like the poor woman who gave her two mites in Mark 12:42- “And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing”. But how many would feel so moved to give all to the State?  In a beautiful, altruistic world in some other matrix, maybe.  But not on earth then, or today.  Man is too in love with the seven deadly sins. 

Which brings us back to today’s Democratic Party and the Reactionary Elite.

To Be Continued…….

Written by Eric B. Ruark

The post The History of Politics appeared first on Dr. E.C. Fulcher, Jr..

From its inception in the 1830s, the Democratic Party was the party of big business.  I know, you are thinking that wait a minute, the Republicans have always been the party of big business.  Maybe 20^th Century big business, but not 19^th Century big business.  In the 19^th Century, what we consider the big business, today, still gleamed in their inventors’ eyes or fledgling companies just struggling to get the venture capital to get off the ground.  Railroads were regional and men like Cornelius Vanderbilt were working at monopolizing them.  But that was to come after the Civil War.

Prior to the Civil War, big business was cotton.  Cotton ruled the world and American Southern planters ruled cotton.  In fact, as people were beginning to contemplate a Civil War, the Southern politicians thought secession a done deal because they thought that England would not allow the supply of southern cotton to be disrupted to their mills.  If the English mills did not get southern cotton, the British economy would collapse.

Well, the dearth of southern cotton played right into the hands of a small number of wealthy mill owners.  Fearing a civil war in America, these men began growing cotton in Egypt along the Nile and in the blossoming British Raj in India.  What was once too expensive to import economically suddenly became the rage when Lincoln blockaded the southern ports and the supply of American cotton began to dry up.

This also allowed the British mill owners a chance to kill off their competition.  Much of Britain’s cotton products were produced by small, home industries.  When the supply of American cotton dried up, these small businesses went out of business and the workers had to leave their homes and go to the manufacturing centers looking for work.  These underpaid wage-slaves became the hunting ground for a new philosophy coined in Germany by a young man named Karl Marx.

Europe had one thing that America did not: a class-based society.  It was exactly the thing that the early Americans had run away from.  In America, a longshoreman like Cornelius Vanderbilt could work their way up the economic ladder and become one of the wealthiest men in the country by sheer force of will and fists.  In Europe, that would not be possible.  A man born in one social-economic class was fated to stay in that class.  Marx became preoccupied with an attempt to understand his contemporary capitalist mode of production, as driven by a remorseless pursuit of profit.  According to Marx, that profit was derived from the exploitation of the workers whom he called the proletariat.  (Think of the British cotton workers in the example above who lost their home businesses and then had to work for the men who had destroyed them.)  According to Marx, this class struggle would eventually lead mankind to Communism as the fairest and most equitable means of distributing the wealth earned from a class’s common labor.

During the course of the 19^th Century, the Marxist philosophy began to take hold among the down-trodden of Europe’s lower classes.  The most famous expression of his socialism was the Paris Commune of 1871 when a radical socialist, anti-religious and revolutionary government took control of the city of Paris when the French government collapsed during the Franco-Prussian war.  When France surrendered to Prussia and a new government was formed, the Paris Commune refused to recognize it.  Eventually, the new government sent in the French army and the commune came to a bloody end. 

Marx’s writings had a deep impact on those people who felt that the system had marginalized them, slipped them into categories from which they could not get out.  And there was no country where that was more apparent than in Russia.

Russia was ruled by the Tsar.  The Tsar was more than a king or an emperor.  He was the owner.  Basically, the Tsar owned Russia and everyone there lived there by his sufferance.  He gave out the property for the nobles to live on.  If the Tsar gave an estate, that estate included everyone and everything on it.  The people were not allowed to leave the estate without the owner’s permission.  It was a form of slavery that made America’s slavery look like a walk in the park.  Whereas many American states had laws as to the treatment of slaves, there were no such laws in Russia.  An estate owner could beat one of his serfs to death without consequence.  The Romanov family ruled Russia as Tsars from 1613 to 1917.

In 1917 there was a revolution in Russia, followed by a series of mini-revolutions and coups the result of which was the establishment of a Communist government under the control of a triumvirate, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.  When Lenin died, Stalin maneuvered for control and became the sole ruler in Russia.  Trotsky fled to Mexico where he was eventually assassinated. 

The Russian Revolution attracted many Americans.  Remember, this was the height of the Jim Crow period.  Racism was rampant.  Big business, Republican-style was King, Workers were being exploited and living in dirt poor conditions while the corporation owners were living in the mansions on top of Nob Hill.  Marx’s socialist ideas found a home with a small group of people who felt the need to rectify this exploitation.  Unions were formed and struck for fair wages.  At the Ford Motor Company, striking workers were machine-gunned by the Nation Guard which was established to keep this “Red” terror in check.

Coal miners struck.  Pullman train porters struck.  And all strikes were met with an iron fist.  Since the company owners tended to be Republican, their workers began to find a welcome mat spread for them with the Democratic Party.  As time went on and the 20^th Century progressed, more and more Marxist ideas became enshrined in Democratic platforms.  Minimum wage.  Fare wage.  Social Security. Workers had rights.  Workers had the right to be protected.  Workers had the right to safety measures.  Then in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt created the first National Welfare program that had nothing to do with workers, but rather with those who did not work.

And the exact thing that Marx warned against happened.  To Be Continued…

Written By Eric B. Ruark

The post The History of Politics appeared first on Dr. E.C. Fulcher, Jr..

Not many people get my sense of humor.  In fact, there are those who doubt that I have one, usually Liberals who can’t tell a joke themselves.  Take, for instance, the woman who, in her profile listed she/her as the way she wanted to be addressed.  She took offense when I responded to her that I preferred Sir as the way I wanted to be addressed.

Now, I am not a White Supremacist as she claimed.  I AM white and I AM superior to most people (my I.Q. was 162 the last time it was tested), but I tend to side with Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he said, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”  My answer comes from an old Bridget Bardot movie, in which the juvenile delinquents confront the hero and ask his name and the hero responds, “Monsieur, point Avant, point derriere.  Rien de plus”, which roughly translates as “Mister (Sir), period in front, period behind, nothing more.”  I have always wanted to use that line, but until the Liberals added a whole slew of sexes to the two that God saddled us with, I wasn’t able to.  Now, when I tell people to call me Sir, I am insulting them.  Go figure.

Okay, all seriousness aside, I do get a kick out of poking fun at people who take themselves too seriously.  Like the other day, I posted a comment: “Let’s reopen indoor dining and bars for those who have already had Covid.  They can’t catch it and they can’t pass it on.”  One of my Liberal friends posted:  Unproven.  This was from an intelligent man in his 70s who forgot that people who have had Covid also have the antibodies from that disease, which means that they can’t catch it again.  That’s why the government is pushing the vaccines so hard.  The vaccines do not cure the disease, they merely allow the body to manufacture the antibodies against it.

I thought we knew things like that.  That’s why we got the smallpox vaccine as children.  It allowed our bodies to make the antibodies so we would not contact what was once one of the most virulent diseases on this planet.  Polio, the same.  Measles, the same.  We have been so good at controlling diseases that the current generation has no concept of what the purpose of those vaccines was for.  I’d call them fools, but they are foolish because of ignorance, ignorant because they haven’t been taught. 

For example, there is a wave of posts on the internet about how the Democrats have been taken over by the Socialists/Communists and how we are headed towards a socialist government like Venezuela or Cuba.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Oh, we may be heading towards a Cuba/Venezuela style of government, but it has nothing to do with socialism.  To understand that, you have to go back to the beginning and learn things that the “Left” doesn’t want you to know, things that they no longer teach in school.  So, settle back.  I am about to unload on you.

The Democratic Party traces its inception to Thomas Jefferson and his agrarian policies.  But its real beginning was in the 1830s with the presidency of Andrew Jackson.  At that time, Jackson corralled the Jeffersonians from the various states and organized them into a viable political party with its various elements working together towards a common goal, namely getting him elected.  Jackson was the perfect organizer.  He was a general, known for having brought various elements together in his defense of New Orleans from the British in the War of 1812.  He owned an enormous plantation, The Hermitage, (which is currently a museum outside of Nashville, Tennessee) encompassing some 1,120 acres which took some 150 slaves to run.  And according to my History Professor at Rutgers, you had to be one hell of an organizer to run a plantation of this size in the early 1800s.

Jackson was hardly an egalitarian.  The press at the time called him King Andrew because he ruled by what we would now call executive order.  And he ruled with an iron fist.  I say ruled, rather than governed.  The United States had, at one time, a national bank, much like the Bank of England.  The Jacksonian Democrats thought the bank was a tool of corporate interests.  So, Jackson destroyed it.  He refused to recertify the bank’s charter and the bank collapsed. 

The Cherokee Indians were living on prime cotton land in Georgia.  They had Americanized themselves.  They were living in houses, had plantations, owned slaves.  But they were Indians and certain southern planters coveted their land.  So, Jackson ordered them removed to the newly created Indian territory on the other side of the Mississippi River.  The Cherokees took him to court and the Supreme Court told the president that he didn’t have the authority to move the Cherokees.  Jackson told the Supreme Court to go to Hell.  He had the army and that’s all he needed.  Hence, history has the Trail of Tears, unlawful removal of an entire tribe during the harshest time of year. 

Moderates were uneasy about Jackson’s imperial attitude, so they began grooming a well-known personality with a lot of charisma to go up against him, Tennessee Congressman David Crockett.  Jackson threw the whole weight of his machine against Crockett and in what was probably a rigged election, Crockett lost his Congressional seat and his chance to run for President of the United States.  When asked what he thought about the election, Crockett made the famous statement, “You can go to Hell.  I’m going to Texas.”  Who knew that immortality awaited him at the Alamo.

Democratic historians like to claim that these early Democrats represented a wide range of views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society.  They viewed the central government as the enemy of individual liberty.  The Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic and political power in a centralized national government.  They believed that a centralized national government would intervene in the economy that benefitted special interests and would create corporate monopolies that favored the rich.  It was a political philosophy that became known as “States’ Rights”.  (Not exactly the Democratic position today.)

But what was that “Agrarian” society that the Democrats wanted to protect?  Look up the word “Agrarian” and you’ll read that the word means “relating to the cultivation of land”.  The current spin-meisters would like you to believe that the Jackson Democrats were all about the small farmer.  But small farmers weren’t the movers and shakers.  It was the big plantation owners, like Jackson, men with property and by property read slaves who ran the Democratic Party.  That’s why whenever states were added to the Union, one had to be brought in as a “free” state and the other as a “slave” state.

By the late 1700s after the Revolution of 1776, Northern States were coming to the conclusion that slavery was not profitable.  Northern states had to contend with something that the Deep South did not – Winter.  In the north, farms had to close down for about five months.  Anyone owning slaves, field hands dedicated to farming, had to have their slaves idle for most of the year.  It simply was not profitable.  What was profitable was setting up a mill on one of the many rivers that did not freeze over and set up some kind of manufacturing business.  This led to another problem.  During the winter, it was not only the slaves who were idle, their white owners/families were, too. 

The competition arose between the whites and the blacks for jobs in the growing factories in the North and since most of the blacks were slaves, there was nothing simpler to get them out of the way than to “sell them South”.   As the towns around the mills began to grow into cities, more and more white men and families moved off their farms in order to have a constant income.  This gave rise to a new class of people, later identified by a European Radical Reformer named Karl Marx as “wage-slaves”.  Marx differentiated “chattel-slaves” and “wage-slaves”.  (But more on that later.)  But in the South, the big plantations did not have to close down.

Although modern pundits would have you believe that the conflict between the North and the South was over slavery, it was not.  Slavery was one element, but the conflict was entirely economic.  The North looked upon the Southern economy as being based on “Free” labor.  The big planters did not have to pay their slaves whereas, the Northern manufacturers had to pay their labor.  How could the North compete with free labor?  The Northerners had to pay their employees a living wage.  The South did not.  And so the idea of the Abolition of Slavery began to creep into the politics of the era.  This brings us to the Republican Party.

The Republican Party emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed for popular sovereignty which meant that the people within the state had the right to decide whether or not a state would be free or black.  In Kansas, people from North and South flooded into the state to take part in the voting.  They began fighting hence the rise of the Bleeding Kansas mantra. 

In 1856, the fledgling Republican Party put up John C. Fremont for President of the United States.  Fremont was a well-known explorer and a Senator from California.  Despite his notoriety, he lost.  Their next candidate was Abraham Lincoln.  He won.  He won because the Democratic Party was split along regional lines, the more radical Democrats from the Deep South put up one candidate, and the moderates from the mid states like Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia put up another.  This three-way race allowed Lincoln to win.

When Lincoln won, the Deep South seceded, and we had the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the Democratic Party was shut out of politics on the national level for several decades.  But that did not stop them on the local level.  They created the Klu Klux Klan to terrorize people, namely the Blacks who had been given the right to vote along with their freedom.  Several of their surviving generals, led by former General Early began to push the concept of “The Lost Cause”. 

The Lost Cause was a revisionist history of what happened.  The South’s seceding was a just act and heroic cause.  They were defending States’ Rights.  Slavery was just and moral because the former slaves were happy, even grateful.  The Lost Cause permeated literature and as the century came to a close and a new century dawned, the Lost Cause entered the realm of Hollywood and the films.  The first full-length feature film was an adaptation of a best-selling novel extolling the Klan, The  KLANSMAN.  Hollywood changed its title to BIRTH OF A NATION.  Later came the ultimate expression of the lost cause in GONE WITH THE WIND.  The acceptance of the Lost Cause allowed the Democrats to work their way back into national politics.

As the Democrats regained power, Democratic politicians pushed through JIM CROW laws stripping Blacks of their civil and human rights.  Racism became rampant across the country.  1919 was the year in which more blacks were lynched than at any other time in American History.  The Democrats pushed for segregation.  School boards set up an American Apartheid in separate but equal schools.  Whites and blacks were not allowed to mix.  In churches, whites sat in the main area, and blacks were relegated to the balcony.  Blacks were marginalized as to where they could live.  Color lines were not to be broken.  Interracial marriage was against the law.  There was a separate movie industry.  There was a separate baseball league.  There were separate units in the Army.  In the Navy, Blacks could only be servants, not sailors, nor officers. 

To be perfectly honest, during this time, the Republicans were not doing much to resolve the racial issues.  They were the party of big business, expansionism, and high tariffs.  (Up until the Civil War, the United States Government took money in from Tariffs.  A tariff was a tax placed on goods imported into the United States.  During the Civil War, because imports were less, Lincoln inaugurated a personal income tax in order to pay for the war.  He said that once the war debt was paid off, the income tax would stop.  In 1862 a Republican congress passed a law taxing some incomes at 3% and others at 5%.  In 1872, the income tax law was declared unconstitutional and repealed.  It was later reinstated by Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat in 1913.)

If you are thinking that this doesn’t look anything like the current Democratic Party, you are right.  Something happened to change them. 

(To be Continued)

Written by Eric B. Ruark

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Is the Pastor a Hireling or is He Called by God?

As a child, Dr. Fulcher could have never fathomed that he would be called to be a Pastor. He desired to play music for Pastors and live life. While he was growing up, Dr. Fulcher witnessed how congregations treated their pastors. They did not treat them with the respect due to the office of the Pastor. Congregations treated their pastors like hirelings, to be hired and fired at the whim of the cliques within their churches, as opposed to the Pastor being Called and Chosen by God to teach God’s people. But what did the congregation know?  They had not been taught the Truth.  Most people believe that they do not need a preacher to teach them about God.  They think that they can establish a one-on-one relationship by either reading the Bible on their own or sitting out in nature somewhere and watching the world go by. That would be nice, but it’s not the way that the Bible said it should happen.

As time went by, God made manifest to Dr. Fulcher that he was called by God to preach. Dr. Fulcher proceeded to take on a little church in Level, Maryland. This was a big job put in front of him. He would be dealing with people who had nothing to go on but tradition and what they thought. It would take time to preach that out of them and show them that God Calls whom He chooses to preach the Word.

One of the things he had learned during his years as an apprentice was that people had forgotten who and what a “real” Pastor really was.  Most people had never been taught that basic understanding in the first place.  Growing up in a Pentecostal Holiness Church, Dr. Fulcher was able to witness first-hand the compromise and hypocrisy that denigrated the role of the Pastor into something that it was never intended to be. Man’s traditions had made the Word of God non-effect.

Preaching is a prerequisite in the Bible. 1Cor. 1:21 says, “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”  And Romans 10:14 says, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?”

The Bible also goes on to say in 1Peter 5:6, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.”

What Dr. Fulcher had seen in his years serving under others was that most congregations did not want to humble themselves.  They considered the Pastor their servant and not them, his.  And because of that, the congregations placed themselves in a position where they could not be taught something that might upset their sensibilities.  They forgot that they were sheep.

How many people in the past, say 100 years even know what sheep are and what they do?  The modern industrialized era has removed most congregations from understanding exactly what their role in a church is.  Everyone wants to be a chief and no one wants to be an Indian.  Hundreds of years ago when people were closer to nature, most knew the role of shepherd to sheep. 

Sheep are dumb and in need of practically constant care.  If you don’t sheer them, their wool will grow so heavy that they won’t be able to stand up under the weight of their own coats.  They will not drink from moving water, they could be standing by a river and die of thirst. They do not forage for food.  They have to be led from pasture to pasture to eat.  And if they are led wrong, they will follow their leader over the edge of a cliff or the Judas goat into the slaughterhouse. 

When a congregation treats their Pastor like a hireling, the pastor cannot lead them beside the still waters as it states in Psalm 23:2 “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.” because he is in fear of his job.  If he tries to teach them something they do not like, they can (and do) fire him and hire someone else who preaches what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.  That is one of the reasons that Dr. Fulcher did not initiate church membership.  He has not been hired.  He is there to teach the Word regardless of whose feelings get hurt.  The Truth is what makes you free not your feelings.

Dr. Fulcher is not afraid to teach the Word of God… and those who do not wish to learn it the way he teaches it are always able to leave when they see fit, no one is made to stay.   Dr. Fulcher saw too many congregations who did not know how they were supposed to conduct themselves.  He saw too many congregations that were not of one mind and one accord.  He saw too many congregations that thought they were the boss and thought that they knew more than the Man of God.  He saw too many congregations that were out of order and unwilling to cast off their traditions and accept the Truth.  He saw too many congregations that were out of order and unwilling to change.  In Level, Maryland, what he found was a group of people that made up the core of a congregation that was willing to be taught and more importantly, to learn.

                                                Written by Eric B. Ruark and Tanya J. Tillman

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Does a Pastor Live Multiple Lives or Just One?

To the members of a congregation, it may look like being a Pastor or Man of God they wear many hats and lead many different lives. They see him teaching the Word of God and comforting and counseling those that are in need, they also see him use the bible to show the errored ways of those who are out of line and bring them back into the fold.  Then, when he is not in church, he has his own household to run, and personal life outside the church. All these things may look like he is leading several different lives, but looks can be deceiving.  A true Man of God only has one life.  Jesus said, “(Mark 12:30) And thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all they mind, and with all they strength: this is the first commandment.”  A true Man of God must put God first.  Everything else is secondary.  When a Man of God, puts God first, the entire congregation and everyone that is in the Man of God’s life benefits.

The Bible is full of references to sheep and shepherds. Psalm 23:1 states, “A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” In this era of industrialization, we have lost sight of what a shepherd did and therefore, we had lost sight of what the Pastor does.  Sheep are not the smartest animal in God’s creation.  They are followers.  If one walks off a cliff, the others will follow.  They could be dying from thirst but they will not drink from moving water.  And if they are not sheared periodically, their coats will grow so heavy that they will fall to the ground and not be able to get up.  And other animals love to eat them.  The shepherd has to protect them not only from themselves but from predators.

So when you transpose all that a shepherd must do to keep his flock safe to what a Man Of God (MOG) must do to keep his followers safe, you can see that the MOG wears only one hat.  In any church where a Pastor believes in this and takes his role of shepherd seriously as the bible states, they will be the shepherd and the congregation his sheep. This is how Pastor Fulcher runs his church. He has to lead them virtually continuously.  He has to protect them from themselves and he has to protect them from the spiritual wolves that would lead them astray and allow Satan to devour their souls. 

This takes an incredible toll on him.  To perform his job at 100%, his devotion must be complete.  In effect, he has no personal life (as one of the sheep might understand it) because he has dedicated that life to God and the duties that he must perform.  That’s not to say that he can’t enjoy a hobby or two, but if one of his flock gets in trouble or needs counseling, that hobby must be put aside so he can be about God’s work, as the bible says in Luke 2:49 “ And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business”.

And what is “God’s work”?  In Matthew 11:29, Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and come and learn of me…”  The sheep need to learn and the MOG needs to teach, which means that a true Man of God must devote hours on end to the study of the Bible in order to impart its wisdom to his flock.  While others are out doing things, boating, going to a game, or just watching a movie on TV, Pastor Fulcher literally has his nose buried in THE WORD OF GOD.  He is studying not only to show himself approved but to educate his flock so that they might be approved. 

The keyword here is dedication.  Pastor Fulcher and others like him are dedicated to the Bible and imparting what they learn through that dedication to his congregation.  That kind of dedication takes a toll on a man’s natural life while invigorating his spiritual one.  A Man of God is a Man of God 24 hours a day.  It is not something that he can turn on and off.  And this also has an effect on the people around him.

Anyone involved in a personal relationship with a Man of God must understand that they are there to help him, not to distract him.  They benefit from their close relationship with the MOG, true, but at the same time, they, too, are just sheep.  They have to be taught.  They have to be led.  They do not have the luxury of slacking off even for one moment, lest they divert the Man of God from his assigned task.  They are there to stay the Pastor’s arms in those trying times that affect every man.  They have to be his support when he comes under attack from those who do not understand his motives for doing something and are unwilling to wait for the explanation. 

Pastor Fulcher does not live a “normal” life.  He doesn’t just go to work, do his job and come home and forget it.  He is his work every hour of the day, every day of the week.  Sitting out in the congregation, applauding and amening what he says is the blessing that we, the sheep, get from his hours of preparation.  Those hours of preparation come at a cost behind the scenes, that most sitting at his feet cannot fathom.  Our blessing comes through his blood, sweat, and tears.

                                                Written by Eric B. Ruark and Tanya J. Tillman

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Splits, Cliques, Division and Congregation Perception

From the day a ministry is conceived, a lot of preparation and thought goes into how it should be run. The Pastor that wants to preach the True Word of God without tradition, will have to fight against the traditions and false doctrines that have made many traditional churches pits of hypocrisy, compromise, and make-believe worship.  The Pastor that strives to preach the Bible as it is written will have to preach out or expunge the human mindset that gives rise to splits, cliques, and divisions within a congregation. 

The human mindset that gives rise to splits, cliques and divisions within a congregation stems from the fact that the traditional way most churches are run does not mirror God’s order of things in the Bible.  I Corinthians 14:40 says, “Let all things be done decently and in order.”  But what is that order?  According to 1 Corinthians 11:3 “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God”.  A Pastor that wants to preach the Bible as it is written will be intolerant of cliques and divisions in any church he pastors. 

For a congregation to be Bible-like, it must be of one mind and one accord.  Cliques keep that from happening.  Cliques instill division, an us-against-them mentality, that eventually leads them to erroneous assumptions that they know more than their pastor.   Dr. Fulcher is a Pastor that chooses to preach the Bible as it is written, without traditional false-hoods. During the beginning of his ministry he had to show the people that it was their traditions that were out of control and false, not God. 

One of the first things Dr. Fulcher and Pastors like him have to do is preach out tradition to rebellious congregations and teach them who the Bible puts in charge of the congregation.  The Pastor is the shepherd and the congregation are the sheep and sheep do not tell the shepherd what to do, where to take them or what to feed them.  In the Bible order of things, the pastor is the one who is supposed to be in control.  And many people do not like that.  People’s egos can be so strong that they can become unwilling to accept their position as sheep to follow and not to lead.  Because of their lack of knowledge of bible order, they become the blind leading the blind and are not able to admit it or understand their error. The Bible says that people must “learn of Him”.  Those not willing to learn will be driven out by the continued preaching of the Bible.

Another problem that Pastors have to deal with behind the scenes is one of perception from the congregation and others.  Many times, things a Pastor says will be misinterpreted by those listening because they are not steeped in as much Bible knowledge as he is and they judge him by human standards and not Biblical ones.

Dr. Fulcher founded his church Truth House Ministries Inc on the teaching from Luke 4:4 which states that “And Jesus answered him saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”  For Dr. Fulcher and other Pastors like him, that means for every Bible question, there is a Bible answer.  There will be times that Dr. Fulcher and other Pastors will do or say something for a completely Biblical reason, but people listening may react based on their human understanding before that reason has been explained to them or the reason is manifested. A lot of congregations believe they know better.  They forget that the Bible also tells them in Ecc12:13 ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” So they should do that before making a decision.  They forget that God’s ways are higher than man’s ways as the bible states in Isa 55:8-9, “ 8“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord, 9“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” and that needs to be taught to them.

A Pastor that is teaching the bible way without tradition will teach that God is in control and God’s word is right, Dr. Fulcher is one of those Pastors. Pastors like him strive to bring dignity, honor and respect back to God’s word simply because it is God’s word.  Some people will listen and some will not.  Dr. Fulcher and Pastors like him want to be sure that those who choose to listen understand the great gift they are being given.

                                                   Written by Eric B. Ruark and Tanya J. Tillman

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