Best New Thinking: Should We Tolerate the Intolerant?

New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

Elisabeth Braw explores the potential consequences of being too tolerant.

"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies Financial Times.

Popper, an Austrian philosopher who had fled the Nazis, wrote those words as he came to grips with how the Nazis had infiltrated and overrun liberal European societies. Fast forward to today. Elisabeth Braw, writing in the Financial Times, cited Popper’s thinking about the risks of tolerating the intolerant as she explained the recent explosion of terror threats on Sweden following incidents of Koran burnings. Although the Swedish government condemned the burnings, it could not prevent them essentially because of freedom of speech protections in Swedish law.

So Sweden finds itself in a double bind: it badly wants to stop Koran burnings, but to do so it would have to undermine a key aspect of its liberal democracy. Of course, that dilemma is not unique to Sweden in this era of violent hyper-partisanship.

Braw is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Listen as she explores the potential consequences of being too tolerant in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.

What do you think? If Sweden could find a way to outlaw desecration of the Koran (and other holy books), would the terror threat disappear? And would that justify limiting freedom of expression?

Link to article in the Financial Times that is referred to in the podcast (the article is behind a paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/0ac9e1a9-2aad-47d9-83fb-4839e9b31b33

This episode was originally published on Aug 24, 2023