WHICH IS ALL POLITICS IS:

In the coming days and weeks, we can expect intelligence officials to spar with civil libertarians over the extent to which the new privacy measures prompted by the Snowden revelations--like end-to-end data encryption software--are responsible for the attacks. But however that debate plays out, it seems safe to say that the slaughter in the City of Lights will at least dent the celebrity of Snowden and other privacy advocates like him, and make his admirers' dire warnings about the existential threat to liberty posed by the NSA seem overblown.

In periods of relative safety, Americans tend to be sympathetic to the Jeffersonian tradition--that is, zealously protective of their civil liberties and alert to the danger of creeping federal tyranny. But in periods of perceived danger, the Jacksonian impulse to get the bad guys at all costs grows more powerful. [...]

As these debates reopen, hard-core Jeffersonians and Jacksonians alike will insist that any deviation from their preferred position will lead to either tyranny or chaos. But it is important to remember that America has a 300 year tradition of balancing civil liberties, government power, and security through a mix of legislation, judicial oversight, and public debate. While our system isn't perfect, we have mostly reached compromises that accommodate both of these deeply American political traditions relatively well. Post-Paris, the terms of the debate have changed, but that capacity for balancing opposing values likely has not.

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