The Truth About Halloween Amazon.com: The Truth about Halloween eBook : Fulcher Jr, Dr E C: Kindle Store.

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So, you want some chocolates, some roses, or a gift because the calendar said this is the day that you must get these things, or your relationship is not real. What if there was so much more to it than that? What if by celebrating this day, you were actually giving gifts to pagan gods? What if this was all a lie, and not about love or relationships at all?

Amazon.com: The Truth about St. Valentine’s Day eBook : Fulcher Jr, Dr E C: Kindle Store

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What will you do with the TRUTH?

The Truth about Easter – Kindle edition by Fulcher Jr, Dr E C. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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The Truth About Christmas – Kindle edition by Fulcher Jr, Dr E C. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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Grace, the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Seems simple enough to understand and accept right? Free and Unmerited Favor of God. Who wouldn’t want that? You would think that everyone would be lining up to accept this amazing free gift, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Let’s talk about that.

Why is Grace so hard to accept?  Maybe the question should be asked this way: Why is YOUR Grace so hard for OTHER people to accept?  Because that’s the real problem.  It’s not that you cannot embrace Grace; it’s that others cannot accept your accepting Grace.  Kind of convoluted, isn’t it, but makes sense. People see you enjoying your freedoms that Grace has allowed you and immediately they are offended and become judgmental of your expression of acceptance. But why?

In the Bible, Grace is mentioned 170 times in 159 verses.  The first time is in Genesis 6:8 “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord”.  But what exactly did that mean?  If you read the verses leading up to verse 8, you will see that the LORD is planning on destroying every living thing for Genesis 6:6 “And it repenteth the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart”. But he didn’t repent the existence of Noah.  He gave Noah a get-out-of-jail-free card because he “found favor” Proverbs 3:4 “So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man”. What had Noah done to receive that Grace?  Nothing.  It was a gift.

As you look through the other verses where Grace is mentioned, you begin to notice a pattern.  Grace is a gift.  No one does anything to receive it.  They are either given Grace, or they are not.  Grace is always tied up with another word: “found” or some variation thereof.  The Lord gives Grace and men either find or obtain Grace.  Proverbs 3:34 in various translations of the bible, hint that the Lord gives Grace to scorn the scorners, “Surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace unto the lowly. Surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace unto the lowly. Surely He scorns the scornful, But gives grace to the humble. Surely he scoffeth at the scoffers; But he giveth grace unto the lowly. He mocks the mockers, but gives grace to the humble”. Reading this and thinking about the original question of why is it so hard for others to accept your grace, makes the answer more obvious and easier to swallow. It’s simple-jealousy. 

Grace allows you to do something and be something that they cannot be: FREE.  Everyone without Grace is bound to try to follow the WHOLE law of God, which is impossible.  In order to find salvation, they must obey every jot and tittle to the letter.  In numerous places, in several letters, Paul refers to this juxtaposition of Grace vs. Debt.  Even James says that if you follow the Law, you must follow the whole law and that to break even one the most minor of rules negates the whole thing. 

Grace frees you from that.  Christ’s death frees you from that.  The blood of Christ frees you from that.  When God sees you through the blood of Christ, one of God’s natural laws comes into play.  Photographers like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston and others used this law to their advantage.  Panchromatic film (Black & White film) does not see or record color in the way our human eyes and brains do.  B&W film sees ALL the visible colors of light.  (God sees all the colors of light, after all he created it: “Let there be light.”)  So, if you are looking at a red rose and photograph it through a red filter, when you go to print the picture, the rose will appear white.  Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”. 

In effect, the jealous person becomes incensed because he can see a red rose; he can touch a red rose; he can even smell a red rose – therefore, the rose in your picture should be red.  But you can hold the photo up and say, “No.  God sees my rose as white.”  You see, there is nothing that anyone can do to make that red rose turn white.  Like the followers of Baal on top of Mt. Carmel, all the shouting, self-flagellation, dancing in the spirt… in short, nothing will turn that red rose white.  But that also means that you, as the possessor of Grace don’t have to do anything, either.  God sees your rose as white because of the filter he looks through. You are now free to devote what time you may have used trying to turn the red rose white towards other, more fruitful projects like Matthew 11:29 “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls”.

The jealous person can look at you and see your “sins”.  You may drink.  You may smoke.  You might even go to a club in which scantily clad women (or men) perform. And they can get all Bertha-Better-Than-You about it.  But according to the Bible, it is written that 1Cor. 15:50 “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption”. 2 Cor. 5:16 “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more”. So why try to perfect something that cannot be perfected in the first place.  This line of thinking actually leads us into another question for another post: Why are some people so blinded that they cannot see the obvious? All they have to do is read and understand.  But that must mean that God does not want them to understand.  In other words, God does not love everybody…. WHAT??? And the crowd goes Wild!!! We shall definitely come back to that, but for now, lets focus on those he does love.

To those of us he does love, he looks at us through the blood of Christ and does not see our sins.  Not that our sins are not there.  He just doesn’t see them.  And therein lies His Grace.  He freely looks through his filtered spectacles (i.e. the WORD) and sees us as he first created us before the fall, giving us the chance to know Him as Adam was supposed to know him.  Freeing us to be what we were originally created to be.

Why wouldn’t anyone want that????

Written by Eric B. Ruark and Tanya J. Tillman

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A while ago, during a sermon, Dr. E C Fulcher Jr made a statement that got me thinking. He mentioned that while he was a Man of God sent here to perfect the saints as it states in Eph 4:11-12 “ And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:”, that he could save us and yet also be a castaway himself. I thought to myself, how could that be possible. I considered this statement and realized that he was echoing Paul’s famous statement in 1Corinthians 9:27 “But I keep under my body and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”  Reading this scripture only made me think more and I decided that I needed to do some more digging. There must be a deeper meaning.

The word Castaway being translated here in the New Testament is the Greek ‘adokimos’ which means unapproved, rejected (and by implication) worthless.  And it got me to thinking… are the men of God in the Bible castaways of one sort or another?

Let’s take a look at Moses. Moses was chosen to lead his people out of bondage into the promised land, yet… he became unapproved and was rejected from crossing over into it.  His people weren’t any less saved or less chosen because of his mistake.  He became a castaway on the wrong side of the Jordan River.  He was allowed to look into the promised land, but he was not allowed to enter it, Deu 32:52 “Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.” Thus, making him one of God’s castaways.

Then there was Joseph, who began his adventures as a castaway.  He was unapproved and rejected by members of his own family.  His brothers hated him so much because he was loved by his father more than all his brothers, Gen 37:4 “And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.” He was cast out of his family by his brothers and sold into slavery, Gen 37:27 “Come let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.” Yet, he was able to use the gifts of his dreams and interpretation that God gave him to overcome his castawayness (my word) and rise to the highest position in the land of Egypt. Gen 41:42-43 “And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.”

Not to mention Sampson, another of God’s castaways.  Sampson was gifted strength by God, his command was to never tell anyone the source of his strength. However, Sampson fell in love with a woman named Delilah. He allowed himself to be seduced by her and because of his love for her, told her the secret, Judg 16:17 “That he told her all his heart, and said unto her, There hath not come a razor upon mine head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb: if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.” This gave Delilah the information that she needed and she turned him over to the lords of the Philistines for payment, who came and cut his hair. His loss of strength was a symbol of his castawayness. 

According to historical records, Isaiah and Jeremiah were unapproved and rejected by the people they were trying to reach.  Isaiah was so rejected that he was murdered, sawn in half, by the people who refused his message.  Jeremiah had to flee Jerusalem and ended up in Ireland and the people who rejected him ended up in captivity in Babylon. 

But the Bible was written for those of us upon whom the end would be and it was written in English (KJV) which means that we also have to look at the English word “Castaway” and derive some meaning therein.  Cast – a – way.  Something that is thrown away.  But thrown by whom? 

Take Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they were “cast” into the furnace by the King’s men, Dan 3:21 “Then these men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.”

Then there wasJonah, he was “cast” into the sea by the sailors for the whale to swallow him, Jon 1:12 “And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea: so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.”  

Now Stephen was “cast” out of the city to be stoned, Acts 7:58-59 “And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  

In virtually all the verses in which “cast” is used, it means to throw. 

But when you “throw” something, you throw it somewhere.  There is no nebulous place called “away”.  If I throw a wrapper “away”, I have thrown it into the garbage.  Think of all the “away” places you have thrown things and you will see that whatever “away” place has been your target, “away” has been a place.  And a “place” equals a target.

A baseball pitcher throws a baseball away from him but towards the target of the catcher’s mitt.  A quarterback throws the football towards a receiver downfield.  The whole concept of being a castaway depends on who is doing the throwing: man or God.

Now, I live on a boat, so the whole concept of casting something away took on a whole different direction.  I’m a fly-fisherman.  Norman Maclean nailed it in the final paragraphs of his book, A River Runs Through It.  Robert Redford used it as the closing soliloquy for his movie of the same name:

            “Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t.  Like many fly fishermen in western Montana, where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.  Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being on with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

            Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

            I am haunted by waters.“

When Dr. E C Fulcher Jr talked about being a castaway, this statement flooded into my head and took on the form of an analogy.  God is the fly fisherman.  The men of God are the fly (bait) and the fish are the Hagios.  God is not seining netting the river to capture all the fish that are swimming there.  He doesn’t want them all.  He is very particular about which fish He wants.  He casts his fly, the Man of God, to a specific location and the Man of God’s message lures one fish in particular to it.  He is not casting his fly away.  Rather He is casting it to something.  The chosen, the called-out ones, are harvested one at a time, slowly with meticulous care until the creel is filled.  The creel only holds so many.  This many and no more.  Only in the eyes of an unbeliever, can the Man of God be a castaway.  To us fish, he is something to be desired above all else.  He is the direct connection to God and by him, God will reel us in.

Rev 22:1 ” And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

Written by Eric B. Ruark and Tanya J. Tillman

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My name is Dr. E C Fulcher Jr. I am the Pastor of Truth House Ministries Church Inc. in Abingdon, Md. I have been preaching full-time for over 50 years. I came to Maryland in the mid-’70s. Abingdon was not where I landed, but Harve De Grace. In November 1975, with a small nucleus of believers, I rented an old bar in Havre de Grace, Maryland, and with the nucleus of believers, I had been preaching to, established the foundation of a ministry that was to become capable of launching the message to the world via short-wave radio and eventually Internet Television.  It became known as Truth House Ministries, and my magazine changed from Crusade for Truth to The Present Testament Magazine.  Some of the goals of Truth House Ministries Church Inc are to:

1) Preach the message of grace and freedom to people who are bound by religious tradition and opinions of man, and:

2) To show that, even in today’s world, a Christian can be an intelligent, educated, and completely normal person, capable of fitting into any part of society.  All they have to do is put God first.  Christians do not have to speak in tongues or quote Bible verses to people.

By the early 2000s, it became clear that we needed a bigger space to accomplish our goals.

3303 Emmorton Road was a piece of property that was first owned by a United Christian Pentecostal Denomination. The Pastor had put a slab of concrete down and wanted to start building. Unfortunately, he did not get the county’s permission to build and was therefore shut down for not following procedures. During the same time as that, the Pastors wife had an affair leaving the Pastor feeling as if he should leave his position. He felt that since his wife had an affair, and he had not ruled over his own home, that he should not be ruling over a congregation, so he gave the property to another man, Mr. Mitchell.

Mr. Mitchell had made plans for the property, but they never came to fruition. It’s funny because years prior to this, I had actually looked at this property and thought the price would be out of reach, so I moved on. During the time of Mr. Mitchell taking ownership of the property and deciding what to do with it, I was across town looking at another piece of property. I actually put a down payment on a property. During the inspection process, it was discovered that the property was unsafe and would not be a good purchase, so I withdrew from that and continued looking.

At some point, I came into contact with Mr. Mitchell and he visited my church that was located in Harve de Grace at the time. A very small building but filled with the Word. Mr. Mitchell said to me, this place is way too small for what you have going on here, you need a bigger place. So we talked and he decided to sell me the property that he was given by the other Pastor. The beginning negotiations were a little rocky and financing had not been made available at the time. Between Mr. Mitchell and I trying to work out something, he had gone back to Florida and I was here in Maryland. At some point, we spoke and continued with negotiations. I said to him, “ You have seen where I am and have acknowledged that I need a bigger space, so you acknowledge I am in need. Now the bible says in 1 John 3:17 “But if a man has this world’s goods, and sees that his brother is in need, and keeps his heart shut against his brother, how is it possible for the love of God to be in him?”  Mr. Mitchell was at a loss for words, he expressed that no one negotiates like that, at which I pointed out I do. He had nothing left to say except, ok. Let’s work something out. He came back to Maryland and we came to an agreement. I put down $100,00 with no idea where or when financing would come. I just trusted God.

At this time, the property was ours and we began working on immediately in the month of November. Instead of hiring a construction crew and spending thousands of dollars, the men, the brothers of the church answered the call to come and build a house for the Lord. Yes, we all know that we individually are houses of God, but when we gather to meet we need a physical place to do so, hence building a house for the Lord. Just like the bible says we should.

Haggai 1:2-5, 7-8 “Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’s house should be built. (3) Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, (4) Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? (5) Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. (7) Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. (8) Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD.

I always thought it slightly comical how God gave the property to a man that never did anything with it, and I had to buy it from that man. But besides God having a sense of humor, it goes to say that God will give the opportunity for His word to come to pass. Think about it, Haggai 1:7-8 states, “(7) Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. (8) Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD. His word doesn’t say to buy him a house, it actually tells us to go, bring wood and build the house. So maybe we had to purchase the property in order to build the Lord’s house so that His word would come to pass…..

Even if that wasn’t the case, the fact that the brothers of this church built this building, God’s House with their own hands, gave their heartbeats to fulfill this endeavor is a true blessing and testament to the love and dedication to God’s Word.

I remember the opening day celebration and service. It was surreal. My ministry is called Truth House Ministries Inc, but I dedicated this building to God and during the first service, read a verse of scripture that resonated so powerfully that it became the basis upon which the building was named the City of Truth.

Zec 8:3 “Thus saith the Lord; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the holy mountain.”

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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

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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

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