@ dankk
I agree with you about the controlled speech. If you are willing to pay the price like Snowden did and be banned to a foreign country leaving everything and everyone you love behind, then they can not control your thinking or speech. It's just ashamed you can be arrested for "non-violent resisting" for disagreeing with a law officer.
One the $20 gold thing, my grandfather said a hamburger, fries and drink cost 5 cents. He also said they had turned most of their gold in and got the equivalent valued certificates, but when they searched his father's house they basicly took everything including his rightful $20 worth and only left him with a $10 note.
I agree with most of what you say but they are already in the process of shutting bitcoin related things down in the US. I used to use buy-a-hash payment system but the Fincen has shut them down along with several others. BTCGuild is having to ban NY residents from mining there due to new regulations, Florida helped the Government arrest people for assumed money laundering because they were dealing with large amounts of bitcoin and California has been sending out cease and desist letters to bitcoin businesses for 9 months now(without any luck, so that's a positive thing). I love everything about bitcoin and want it to prosper. The best thing we have going is the IRS ruling on bitcoin being personal property.
Thanks for your responses
Snowden is an extreme example. Most people would be able to use the court system to get out of any bogus charges brought against them. Snowden does not want to takt the risks that the courts may side against him.
I am not sure about the exact details of your grandfather's search, however this sounds like the search was illegal. The government is not able to enter into someone's home like this without either permission or a warrant. If permission was given then shame on him, if they had a warrant then it is likely that there was evidence of some kind of crime.
All the stuff about the NY regulations is either people spreading FUD or they do not understand the impact of the proposed regulations. The regulations will only affect people who are exchanging bitcoin to/from fiat, and even then only require businesses that do this to gather identity documents of their customers and to have at least as much bitcoin on reserve as they hold in customer deposits (meaning not run on a fractional reserve system). There is no reason why BTCguild would shut down for NY residents.