A Taxonomy of Fear

This explains why so much outrage in the public square is now directed at what one might call speech crimes. Even the neologism hate speech speaks to this. While earlier generations might have seen damage to body or property as the most serious categories of crime, a highly psychologized era will accord increasing importance to words as means of op

to make the leap from the natural revulsion we experience at certain alternative worldviews to actively silencing them is to surrender to the authoritarian tendency.

In the 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff defined safetyism as “a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, which means that people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns.”15