Threat, danger or a growing menace, it is all of those. Like in-coming from multiple directions, its onerous policies portend extensive upheaval and damage in the lives of Americans. It simultaneously provides free stuff for some while placing harsh restrictions on others. In time, all will suffer its consequences. It is what I call the Sixth Estate.

The three branches of government are the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Estates of power, along with the mainstream media (4th Estate), and the rapidly proliferating citizen-controlled-Internet-news sites and blogs, with their ever-expanding base of followers, are now recognized as the 5th Estate. Though all wield power in their own right, it is the Sixth Estate that has become the most insidious with its steady and stealthy assault on America’s freedoms.

Regardless of political ideology, the alert to all Americans is that freedoms are slipping beyond their grasp. In a relentless power-grab, the mammoth conglomerate of federal agencies, flush with unelected bureaucrats, are wielding powers beyond public consent and Congressional control.

The Sixth Estate is analogous to toxic and chemical-laden flood waters slowly rising and filling every nook and cranny of what was once safe ground or habitat. Once the toxicity is entrenched, the rot and decay begin. So it is with the Sixth Estate.

At first, its power absorption was slow and furtive. Today, the rapid growth and far-reach of the Sixth Estate represents a shift in power. Federal agencies are having negative impact with heavy-handed dictates that exceed their original mandates. Rules and regulations that were once intended as guidelines and protections are increasingly being defined as controls and forcible actions.

Whether or not the intent is nefarious, onerous government control over individual lives or businesses is dangerous for any free people. History reveals that the inevitable happens. As the State controls lives and livelihoods, it most often produces a form of Socialism. Or, as evidenced in governments across the globe, a Communist state rises to power. A brutal state to be sure.

Today, many Americans are either flirting with or embracing Socialism. Substantial free goodies are promised, at least short term. It is entrapment by government where people are encouraged not to be self-reliant or productively self-sustaining, but to rely on government for their welfare. Capable Americans are today becoming willing dependents of the State. Analytical and independent thought is to be avoided. Responsibility and accountability have been downgraded. How that becomes destructive and demoralizing to the human will and psyche is another article.

Through the nascent stages of free stuff and government nurturing, people fail to see what is pointed at them. Today, federal agencies are growing in power at a staggering pace. Glaring examples are the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the Internal Revenue Service, and the BLM (Bureau of Land Management). All are reportedly stockpiling guns and ammunition and employing enforcement agents trained to deal with a recalcitrant public. Add the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to the list of federal behemoths. Due to its lax oversight of America’s processed food supply, the FDA is being exposed for its culpability in the proliferation of brain diseases and poor health of millions of Americans in the book, “Aging: Warning – Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental & Financial Minefields.”

Regulatory agencies under recent administrations have been unleashed to accumulate untenable amounts of power that usurps the freedoms of everyday Americans. A deluge of new regulations have been initiated as presidents use executive orders to autonomously sign policies into existence with the swipe of their pens.

It is clear that a threshold is crossed when federal agency policies are allowed to trump federal law simply because any sitting president, Democrat or Republican, says so. Administrative policy must never supplant constitutional law or disenfranchise the power of the ballot box by circumventing the will of the people. Yet, it is happening.

Today, federal agencies have increasingly become the means of entry though a side or backdoor for an anti-Constitution, anti-faith, anti-capitalist, anti-military and anti-freedom form of government to take root and overwhelm a people. These administrative agencies are no longer outliers of power; they have protracted power.

Under Socialism or Communism, noncompliance can get an ordinary citizen, who is protecting his property or stating a view opposite to that of the government, heavily fined, have his property seized or be thrown in jail. It is not the direction America should be leaning. An increasing percentage of the public, blindly ignoring or unaware that they will never be a part of the Socialist ruling elite, are voting for their own persecution under a Socialist ruling class. It is a history lesson not to be ignored. It is one that free Cuban-Americans well-understand.

Deceit is being practiced by U.S. politicians who tout European Socialism. One need only look to Poland as a tested and failed Socialist State. In a recent “sweep” by Conservatives at the poles, the Polish people have just ousted Socialists and the last vestiges of Communism from its government. Poland is quickly transitioning to a capitalist-based, free-market system that allows the people to prosper and imbues them with freedoms. 

In America, two blockades exist that thwart the State from subjugating its citizens to its whims: The U.S. Constitution and people of faith who believe that the people’s rights come from God. The protective rights in the first and second amendments to the Constitution are necessary for national survival. Both, however, are a bane to the ideology that supports a Socialist system or Communism from sea to shining sea.

The strategy has long been in play. Massive administrative-federal agencies, with their vast array of rules and regulations, skirt approval by making an end-run around the voting public. The agencies are being used to circumvent both the voting booth and Constitutionally-grounded members of Congress. Many in Congress are either ambivalent about or supportive of a ratcheted-up power-grab by government agencies filled with unelected authoritarians that administer government policy.

Can that be combatted? The answer remains at the voting booth along with a rise-up of the Fifth Estate of “citizen involvement” in information dissemination. Though the public must be warned that the Sixth Estate is a growing danger, it is the Fifth Estate, the civilian press, that the government fears most. Evidence of that is the proposed control of content over the Internet. Today, information still flows freely from civilian news sources, websites, and blogs. All must be utilized to their fullest to combat censorship. Freedom of speech is the people’s most devastating weapon against governments that would be totalitarian.

That brings attention to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). According to 2016 Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX), the government wants to clamp down on grassroots’ voices (what I call the people’s media) and suppress freedom of expression over the Internet. Cruz is battling a proposed power-grab by the FCC. The push by some in Congress to allow the federal agency to control Internet content or limit the sharing of ideas sends chills down the spines of the “people’s media” that represent a wide range of ideologies online.

The power of the civilian press, the Fifth Estate, grows because voices can be heard that may oppose the party in power or because they have followers that seek points-of-view that are either ignored or controlled by an unreliable mainstream media. A responsible exchange of ideas and ideals among grassroots citizens in any form of conveyance is representative of freedom of speech by a free people. Beware of those who would curtail it.

Applying a choke-hold of controls on businesses and families through rules and regulations administered by offices filled with unelected, government-paid bureaucrats is an undemocratic, republic-busting means to an end. As federal agencies gain power and tighten controls, it is in reality the tightening of a totalitarian noose on the citizenry. Such control vested in Big Government with an insatiable need for power over the people has proven, over time, to transform from Socialism-light to hard core Communism. In modern day politics, there is always a Communist wing to every Socialist party waiting to emerge.

Under the guise of the public good, Big Government must convince simpleton citizens that they do not know how best to manage their own lives. Pay no attention; the intrusions, the tentacles of government wrapping around their daily lives, are nothing to be alarmed about. When, in fact, embedded in the multiples of hundreds of thousands of forced policy controls imposed by government are the vise, the hammer, the stripping of freedoms.

A dust-up over comments by 2016 Presidential Conservative candidate Dr. Ben Carson regarding a disarmed Jewish population unable to fight back and defend itself against a brutal Nazi regime must be used as a history lesson. Once Germany’s National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nazis) disarmed a segment of it society, it began to annihilate them. No guns, no defense.

Today, one need only look at Austria where gun sales are now through the roof. Austrians no longer trust their Socialist-light government to protect them from the infiltration of terrorists secreted within an unidentifiable refugee population crossing their border by the thousands. Droves are reportedly disappearing without a trace into the population.

The Second Amendment is vital to America’s survival from both internal and external threats. The First Amendment is the guardian of the Second Amendment.  Both must be sustained at all costs. The peoples’ voice must never be quieted. It is Big Government’s threats to freedoms and its extra-Constitutional forays that have spurred the rapid rise of the “people’s media” on the Internet.

As noted, dangerous intrusions into American lives include Big Government’s push to confiscate guns out of the hands of its citizenry and the denial of freedom of speech and exchange of ideas over the Internet. Add to those, Big Government’s control over what your child learns in school as dictated by the mammoth federal agency, the DOE (Department of Education). The DOE has wrenched educational content from local and parental influence. Most Americans are woefully unaware that the current government’s Office of Information and Regulatory affairs seeks the authority to pursue “cognitive infiltration” as a means to probe Americans’ thought processes and psychological state.

It is time for Americans to take a hard look at the intentions of Big Government and its advocates. Evidenced by the existence of armed enforcement teams to assure that the public adheres to the seemingly endless administrative edicts that are not Constitutional law, Americans today are already being subjected to a form of State-controlled, bureaucratic tyranny that takes the power from the people and usurps their freedoms. Uneasy with the encroaching, often unfounded, intrusions into their lives, Americans are slowly becoming ever more aware of the vise-like grip of unelected, dictate-wielding, tax-payer-paid policy wonks that represent a rapidly emerging, more powerful strong-arm of government. It is the Sixth Estate.

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Sharon Sebastian, author of the book “Aging: WARNING – Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental & Financial Minefields,” is a columnist, commentator and contributor in print and on nationwide broadcasts on topics ranging from healthcare, culture, religion and politics to domestic and global policy. Sebastian’s political and cultural analyses are published nationally and internationally. Website: www.AgingWarning.com.