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"These esoteric, intellectual debates - I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won't, because that's a much tougher conversation to have," he added.

"I think what we as a country have to decide is: Do we have amnesia? Because I don't," he said. "And I remember what we felt like on September 12, 2001."

He suggested those stressing the paramount importance of privacy and civil liberties might not seem so principled after "the next attack that comes, that kills thousands of Americans as a result."

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[At the forum in Aspen, Colo., Christie praised the lack of daylight between the former president and the current president on surveillance issues. "I think both the way President Bush conducted himself and the way President Obama has conducted himself in the main on those types of decisions hasn't been different, because they were right and because we haven't had another one of those attacks that cost thousands and thousands of lives," he said.

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It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.