re: #94 Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut

Not the case:

Governor Chris Christie recently challenged Senator Rand Paul over his opposition to the National Security Agency metadata program. Paul has also tangled with Senator John McCain and other internationalists over drone warfare, democracy promotion, and, more generally, intervention abroad.

So what else is new? The return of the most venerable strain of conservative foreign policy — isolationism — was utterly predictable. GOP isolationists dominated until Pearl Harbor and then acquiesced to an activist internationalism during the Cold War because of a fierce detestation of Communism.

With Communism gone, the conservative coalition should have fractured long ago. This was delayed by 9/11 and the rise of radical Islam. But now, twelve years into that era — after Afghanistan and Iraq, after drone wars and the NSA revelations — the natural tension between isolationist and internationalist tendencies has resurfaced.

In fact, both parties are internally split on domestic surveillance, as reflected in the very close recent House vote on curbing the NSA. This is not civil war. It’s a healthy debate that helps recalibrate the delicate line between safety and security as conditions (threat level and surveillance technology, for example) change.

Neither party is going to break up over the Snowden Affair. Yes, there is dissension, but that’s not a lethal thing and it does serve the useful function of prompting debate on privacy vs. security.