It wasn’t long ago that conservatives were complaining about Bush Derangement Syndrome. This had to do with the way otherwise intelligent people lost any sense of reason or proportion when it came to anything George W. Bush-related.

The result was a poisoned debate on national security, and the vilification of good Americans — think of those CIA interrogators — keeping us safe from harm.

That then-Sen. Barack Obama happily fed Bush-derangement makes us no less distressed to see some conservatives now exhibiting symptoms of a Republican strain. The outbreak has been occasioned by press exposure of two National Security Agency anti-terror programs, one involving Verizon and the other involving servers for companies such as Google and Facebook. So now the Republican author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, is calling the NSA “un-American.”

Let’s be clear about these programs. The Verizon program involves searching metadata — i.e., what numbers were called, where and for how long — for patterns that help identify terrorists. The PRISM program targets foreigners. Both have clear protocols, both have been briefed to Congress and both have been signed off on by judges.

One other thing: Both yield intelligence that has helped prevent terrorist attacks on the American people — including the foiled 2009 attack on the New York subway system.

Now, we understand that with an attorney general who has already been cited for contempt, with a national-security-adviser-designee who fed the nation a false tale about Benghazi and with an IRS that has targeted conservatives, the administration has not earned the benefit of the doubt.

All the more reason for Republicans to keep their heads. There are real abuses regarding both the behavior and truthfulness at some government agencies. There is zero evidence the NSA is one of them.

At a time when the GOP has been trying to remind President Obama our enemies are still at war with us no matter what we say, it would help if conservatives didn’t join the left in assuming the worst about an agency trying to keep us safe in a lawful way — and by the evidence, doing a darned good job of it.