There are two kinds of power in the world:
1) The power of Might,
2) The Power of Money.
Crypto is to the power of money what weapons are to the power of might.
The individual's right to bear money is just as important to the power of the individual, as is his right to bear arms.
The Federal Government wants to destroy Crypto for the exact same reason they want to do away with the 2nd Amendment. That is, for the diminution of the Individual. They want to make the Government more powerful, and the Individual smaller, less powerful.
I have made the argument here that money falls under the 4th Amendment, which reads,
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The individual's right to be secure in his "papers, and effects" refers to personal property, both intellectual and physical.
The selection of the term “effects” is curious. No state constitution included the word, nor did any of the proposals from state-convention members. Indeed, the first and only source to use the word before its inclusion in the Federal Constitution was the anti-Federalist publication Federal Farmer, which included the phrase in a letter printed in 1787:
The following, I think, will be allowed to be unalienable or fundamental rights in the United States: . . . No man is held to answer a crime charged upon him till it be substantially described to him; and he is subject to no unreasonable searches or seizures of his person, papers or effects . . . .173
Apart from the Constitution itself, no other source before or after this letter used the word “effects” in this context. Indeed, a far greater number of anti-Federalist commentators used either “possessions” or “property” as parallels to “persons” and “papers” around the same time.174
Though no record of the reason for the change from “property” to “effects” in the Committee of Eleven exists, later readers generally agree that the consequence was to narrow the Amendment’s coverage.175
While “other property” could have encompassed other real property, dictionaries from the period indicate that “effects” was synonymous with personal property: possessions other than buildings and land.
Each of the ordinary dictionaries cited by the modern Court as authority for the original meaning of the Constitution defines “effects” to mean chattels or possessions. Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines “effects” as “goods; movables; personal estate”176 and provides the following example sentence: “The people escaped from the town with their effects.”177 Apart from ordinary dictionaries, early legal dictionaries also shed light on the meaning and types of effects.178 In some dictionaries, effects include money and other forms of commercial paper.179
Though the term was most commonly associated with bankruptcy or inheritance, it was not exclusively a term of art for those contexts. Eighteenth-century sources discuss the duty of innkeepers to keep guests’ “goods and effects” safe and the rights of robbed persons to prove which “money, goods or effects” had been taken.180 These and other early sources indicate that the term “effects” meant “personal property” in common and colloquial usage.181
So, our rights to control our money, and intellectual property (Crypto may fall under both) are ALREADY COVERED BY THE 4TH AMENDMENT.
May the simple but powerful standard set forth in the recent Bruen decision also apply here: Text, history, tradition, In common use.
ReplyDelete— Ewin
Yes, let's hope.
ReplyDelete