One thing you could never accuse the Scandinavians of is xenophobia.
Some facts. Of the one million people that migrated to Europe last year, less than a third have come from the warzone in Syria. The rest have used this as an opportunity to migrate. The majority are single men who come from cultural backgrounds that clash with European liberalism and ideas of individual freedom. Europe has reached Popper's tolerance paradox. We cannot be tolerant of the intolerant.
That doesn't mean Europe will ban all Muslims from entering, that is unworkable and unnecessary. It just means that this mass migration will be curtailed. Mass migrations of hundreds of thousands of people into an area, especially when their culture is alien to the host, is never sustainable.
Integration works. Multiculturalism leads to alienation, ghettoisation and voluntary segregation. And integration has a saturation point. Europe is reaching that.
Wow, well said that man!! Karl Popper was a truly great philosopher. Rana, Rune et al would do well to read some of his works.
The paradox of tolerance
The liberal ideology’ has a number of paradoxes. One that threatens liberalism at its core is the paradox of tolerance. It is without doubt that liberalism is an ideology of tolerance. The common argument from the liberal front sounds as follows: “I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it!” This type of openness towards the other can be parasitic to the polity in question. For, if the liberals are to tolerate all the views, would they not succumb, in the end, towards views which reject liberalism as such? In other words, the paradox of tolerance states that being tolerant must refute the intolerance of the other towards the tolerant self.
Among the first to recognize this paradox was Karl Popper. Although he is primarily (and with good reason) remembered for his philosophy of science, it is essential to view his political philosophy as well. Popper admitted as much by pointing this out in his lectures through a story of his early years. Enamoured by Marxism, as many were in those days, he could not grasp the historicism that accompanied it. During a riot some of his friends were shot by the police. While talking to the Communist party about this event, he was told that his friends lost their lives for a good cause – they were working towards the
inevitable revolution of the proletariat. It is this type of historicism – a belief in the progress of science to predict human affairs – that he rejected. This relation between science and political philosophy is at the heart of his endeavor to have sound scientific theories. (A similar argument was made by his colleague Imre Lakatos, though they later drifted apart – and if there is a despicable relation in philosophy it is theirs.
In a lecture at London School of Economics, Lakatos equally points out the basis of science for political acts.)
Back to tolerance and Popper. Although Popper was a proponent and defender of tolerance, he did recognize its limits – hence the paradox. He could not find a solution to the paradox as such and instead resorted to what is currently called an approach reinstating the political distinction between friends and enemies. The intolerant other is the enemy who must be destroyed:
“We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal”
It would appear strange that a tolerant man as Popper claimed himself to be, would be espousing such a measure towards intolerance. What the paradox of tolerance shows, it seems, is the doctrine emphasized by Carl Schmitt in the 20s and 30s – that the ultimate distinctions in politics are between friends and enemies; and that their relation has a potential of erupting into combat. The paradox of tolerance, in other words, does not have a solution other than Schmitt pointed out: namely, the end of the political (or politics). This is, to be sure, not the end of the world; and Schmitt was clear that an antagonistic form of politics is only the contemporary expression. So he states that in a world without politics, would be one containing: “Many very interesting antitheses and contrasts, competitions and intrigues of every kind, but there would not be a meaningful antithesis whereby men could be required to sacrifice life, authorized to shed blood, and kill other human beings” (Schmitt,
The Concept of the Political, p. 35.
http://paradoxoftheday.com/the-paradox-of-tolerance/