4th's and 5th's - Where is our media?

Since taking office, Barack Obama has tried, and is succeeding with the help of the Democrats, in moving the United Stated of America onto the express lane to Socialism. Not only has he nationalized the banking system, but he has fired the head of General Motors and taken control of the operations of Chrysler Corporation. Can you tell me when, in the history of our Republic, that a sitting president has insinuated himself so directly in the affairs of supposedly free enterprise? Under the guise of a “bailout” the president is accomplishing what over 75 years of leftist dogma and liberalism has failed to do; turn our once free society into another “nanny” welfare state, a la Europe. Further, with the Blair-Holt bill being rammed through the Senate, he has declared war on the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. His ‘end-run’ around the provisions of that amendment are not only transparent, but patently illegal and fully contrary to the intent of the founding fathers, legal precedent and the supreme court's most recent decision.

The thing is, folks, no one is calling him on any of it. Where is the media? If any of this, or any number of other new and proposed government power grabs, had even been hinted at under the Bush administration, it would be blaring from the fronts pages of the New York Times, The Washington Post and every television outlet, internet news site and information source known to man. Protesters would be hurling rocks and Molatov cocktails in the streets.

Are you surprised at the silence? I am. I cannot believe that the press has become such a lapdog of the liberal elite that they have abandoned fully half of the American people in their headlong love affair with the new president. I refuse to believe that they don’t see it. I refuse to believe that they are unaware of the dire consequences of the actions now being contemplated and promulgated by the White House and its congressional lackeys. If you accept that they are aware of what's happening, then why aren't they doing anything about it? Perhaps a little history lesson might enlighten us?

You know that the press is referred to as the fourth estate but do you know where that term originated? According to Wikipedia, the earliest use of the term ‘fourth estate’ to mean the press is found in Thomas Carlyle's book On Heroes and Hero Worship written in 1841, in which he wrote: “British politician [Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”

“If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, his remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837), "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up.” In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General: the church, the nobility and the commoners.

Basically, the news media has always held a powerful sway in the halls of government by reflecting the voice of the people. Reflecting is good, but media also has the ability to manipulate public opinion, elevate the menial and bring down the mighty.

There is another force in politics, one brought forth in the twentieth century, almost as potent as the press; the fifth column. Have you heard the term before? If not, let me enlighten you. A fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group, such as a nation, from within, to the aid of an external enemy.

The term was coined in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War by Emilio Mola, an insurgent general. When his army was approaching Madrid, he broadcast a radio message saying that four columns of his army outside the city would be supported by a fifth column of sympathetic supporters inside the city who were intent on undermining the Republic from within.

Thanks for staying with me on this, because I have a very important question to ask:

When did the fourth estate become the fifth column in America?

This man would like an answer to that question.