<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>munificent</author><text>&amp;gt; Where are all the street protests?!&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m going to interpret that question literally. A key thing you have to keep in mind is that in almost all of the US outside of a few very large cities, the &amp;quot;street&amp;quot; is not a useful public place. People don&amp;#x27;t gather and interact on streets in the US. They are merely channels for cars. Protesting on the streets would be as useful in most cities in the US as wandering around next to a shipping lane on the open ocean. The only people &amp;quot;there&amp;quot; are driving vehicles at full speed.&lt;p&gt;That of course raises the question of where Americans &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; congregate together. Churches are the answer for many, although I believe those are dwindling. Some go to bars. Neither of those is a particularly good venue for dissent.&lt;p&gt;One unfortunate consequence of the US being so car-centric is that we&amp;#x27;ve destroyed public space, and consequently made public assembly much harder.</text><parent_chain><item><author>mtgx</author><text>So is the 4th amendment, and look how much that one is abused. In the end the Constitution really is &amp;quot;just a piece of paper&amp;quot;, if not the &lt;i&gt;government&lt;/i&gt;, not the &lt;i&gt;judges&lt;/i&gt;, not the &lt;i&gt;media&lt;/i&gt;, and ultimately not even the &lt;i&gt;people&lt;/i&gt; respect it, live by it, and try to protect it as soon as it&amp;#x27;s endangered by people trying to accumulate too much power. Where are all the street protests?!&lt;p&gt;I also fail to understand people who so viciously defend the 2nd amendment &amp;quot;because of potential tyranny&amp;quot;, but don&amp;#x27;t try to defend the 1st and 4th amendments with the same aggressiveness, when in fact those amendments are the &lt;i&gt;first line of defense&lt;/i&gt; against that encroaching tyranny, and if they fail, it&amp;#x27;s the first clue the country is slipping into tyranny. Would you rather wait until the very last moment, until people can&amp;#x27;t take it anymore but to rise up against the government with violence and starting a massacre, all just to remove the government? Or would you try to fix things while you still can do it peacefully, by protecting the 1st and 4th amendments, so it doesn&amp;#x27;t have to come to &amp;quot;using the 2nd amendment right to defend against the government with guns&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Or maybe it all comes down to who has more money to raise the awareness about it. NRA is a powerful lobby. ACLU and EFF less so.</text></item><item><author>newbie12</author><text>The right to bear arms is also, explicitly, a protection against tyranny BY the government.  Thomas Jefferson: &amp;quot;&amp;quot;When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>_airh</author><text>It is strange that the same country which cherishes its &amp;#x27;right to bear arms&amp;#x27; on the grounds that it gives them a level of protection that the government is unable to provide is &amp;#x27;happy&amp;#x27; to build the infrastructure which allows the same government to peek into their lives.&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, we don&amp;#x27;t trust the government with the basics (physical security).  On the other, we trust them with information we don&amp;#x27;t want our parents to see (facebook profiles, etc).  ...strange.&lt;p&gt;Edit: When I say &amp;#x27;the country&amp;#x27; I mean the people in aggregate.  Obviously, some people are outraged about this issue, just as some people were outraged when a gunman killed 30 children.  Techies seem to be particularly concerned about this issue but, on the whole, most people are indifferent.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Has the US become the type of nation from which you have to seek asylum?</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/09/has-the-us-become-the-kind-of-nation-from-which-you-have-to-seek-asylum/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>The 4th amendment is strong as it has ever been, and the 1st is much stronger.[1] Are police knocking down your door without a warrant? If not that&amp;#x27;s the 4th amendment working as intended.&lt;p&gt;What we have here is a system:&lt;p&gt;1) Clearly designed to pass a 4th amendment analysis;&lt;p&gt;2) Enabled to to pass such scrutiny be the unprecedented access Americans give corporations to the details of their private lives.&lt;p&gt;For what its worth I think the NSA programs are bad ideas, in an administration that has had a lot of them.[2] But not every bad idea is unconstitutional, that is to say not every bad idea can be fixed in court rather than in Congress.&lt;p&gt;[1] In light of this story, who is still mad at the Supreme Court for holding that Congress couldn&amp;#x27;t shut down the speech of corporations (like the ACLU?)&lt;p&gt;[2] Menacing over the Supreme Court justices during the state of the union probably being the worst.</text><parent_chain><item><author>mtgx</author><text>So is the 4th amendment, and look how much that one is abused. In the end the Constitution really is &amp;quot;just a piece of paper&amp;quot;, if not the &lt;i&gt;government&lt;/i&gt;, not the &lt;i&gt;judges&lt;/i&gt;, not the &lt;i&gt;media&lt;/i&gt;, and ultimately not even the &lt;i&gt;people&lt;/i&gt; respect it, live by it, and try to protect it as soon as it&amp;#x27;s endangered by people trying to accumulate too much power. Where are all the street protests?!&lt;p&gt;I also fail to understand people who so viciously defend the 2nd amendment &amp;quot;because of potential tyranny&amp;quot;, but don&amp;#x27;t try to defend the 1st and 4th amendments with the same aggressiveness, when in fact those amendments are the &lt;i&gt;first line of defense&lt;/i&gt; against that encroaching tyranny, and if they fail, it&amp;#x27;s the first clue the country is slipping into tyranny. Would you rather wait until the very last moment, until people can&amp;#x27;t take it anymore but to rise up against the government with violence and starting a massacre, all just to remove the government? Or would you try to fix things while you still can do it peacefully, by protecting the 1st and 4th amendments, so it doesn&amp;#x27;t have to come to &amp;quot;using the 2nd amendment right to defend against the government with guns&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;Or maybe it all comes down to who has more money to raise the awareness about it. NRA is a powerful lobby. ACLU and EFF less so.</text></item><item><author>newbie12</author><text>The right to bear arms is also, explicitly, a protection against tyranny BY the government.  Thomas Jefferson: &amp;quot;&amp;quot;When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>_airh</author><text>It is strange that the same country which cherishes its &amp;#x27;right to bear arms&amp;#x27; on the grounds that it gives them a level of protection that the government is unable to provide is &amp;#x27;happy&amp;#x27; to build the infrastructure which allows the same government to peek into their lives.&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, we don&amp;#x27;t trust the government with the basics (physical security).  On the other, we trust them with information we don&amp;#x27;t want our parents to see (facebook profiles, etc).  ...strange.&lt;p&gt;Edit: When I say &amp;#x27;the country&amp;#x27; I mean the people in aggregate.  Obviously, some people are outraged about this issue, just as some people were outraged when a gunman killed 30 children.  Techies seem to be particularly concerned about this issue but, on the whole, most people are indifferent.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Has the US become the type of nation from which you have to seek asylum?</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/09/has-the-us-become-the-kind-of-nation-from-which-you-have-to-seek-asylum/</url></story>