If you want to appreciate the divisions in America, all you have to do is look at the editorial page of newspapers. Often you will see two diametrically different views of reality. A good example of that happened last week.

The title of Marc Thiessen’s Washington Post op-ed was “Big Brother Isn’t Watching You.” The title of Senator Rand Paul’s Wall Street Journal op-ed was “Big Brother Really Is Watching You.” Obviously, they disagreed about how to react to the NSA revelation.

Marc Thiessen was concerned that the latest revelations “give terrorists information they did not have about our collection activities.” He also worried that the latest series of leaks teach sources and partners “not to work with us because we cannot keep a secret.”

Only an intelligence expert can tell us whether these leaks really told terrorists anything they didn’t already know. They probably guessed that phone records were being obtained in specific warrants. And even if they didn’t know there was a PRISM program monitoring foreign terrorists, they could have guessed that was possible.

On the other hand, he is right to say that we will have trouble getting future intelligence from certain parties. They rightly will believe that the U.S. government cannot keep a secret.

Senator Rand Paul believes the activities of the National Security Agency do violate the Fourth Amendment, which says that warrants must be specific. He has introduced and will once again introduce the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act. He is also looking into a class-action lawsuit to overturn the decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

He is rightly concerned with the government “monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls.” Marc Thiessen may want to argue that “Big Government Isn’t Watching You.” But when we hear that the government is collecting information on a billion phone calls, it sure seems like Big Brother is watching nearly all of us.