There's a huge horde of people with certain beliefs and preferences who would do lots of very unpopular and crappy things if they only could.
They lie in wait till something happens that can be misused to push through their agenda when other people's brains at least temporarily (sometimes permanently) lose the capacity to think rationally about the topic in question.

Examples;
* TSA tap-downs
* OIF
* Patriot Act

And at other times said 'despicable' people have enough power to bring about the crisis that helps their agenda. Your news are full of it these days....

The nazis even waited till they had a world war as distraction for their most egregious plans.


Societies' biggest failure is to not keep their ~5% 'despicable' people in check, away from (direct) power. Crisis situations that lead to otherwise unacceptable reactions merely expose that the society failed to keep the 'despicable' people away from power. The society enabled them to get into a jump-off position, close enough to power to eventually realise their crappy ideas.



On the other hand, the Norwegians don't seem to be poor at keeping their wrong people at bay; afaik their head of government refused to promote any new anti-terror laws and the state (officially) merely intends to add some police presence to some locations and events.