The notion of a contrast between open and closed societies, which was introduced by Henri Bergson and made popular by Karl Popper, is now familiar even to people who have read neither the former's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932) nor the latter's The Open Society and its Enemies (1945). We all make the rough and ready ideal distinction between an open society that admits anyone who will comply with several abstract general requirements, and in which, once admitted, we can see most of what is going on and freely express our opinion about it; and a closed society that imposes unquestioning conformity with a tangle of concrete obligations, and in which members cannot know much of what is going on at the top and could not express an opinion if they did know.
A current example of the former would be a society that defines its openness in such general terms that it ends up granting even ill-intentioned foreign fanatics easy entry, freedom of movement, access to financial and vocational facilities, and undisturbed use of public goods for terrorist purposes. A recent example of the second would be a society in thrall to a half-blind zealot that forbids genuine education, limits communication, drives out its trained talents and leaves half the remainder stumbling about in a burka.
