When bombarded daily with statements from Governor Cuomo, the lockdown position seems like safetyism: an obsession with avoiding contact with the virus at all costs, even if it means national suicide. The onslaught of social and news media makes it easy to make general assumptions about each side. And there is some truth to the way we characterize left and right during this crisis: As polls demonstrate, the right is slightly more concerned about lockdowns being lifted too slowly and the left is vastly more concerned about lifting lockdowns too quickly. Individuals and cultures differ in the extent to which they’re willing to tolerate risk, so disagreements about safety are inevitable, whether deciding how to protect people from car accidents, crime or Covid-19. Rather than seeing safety as one concern among many, it becomes a sacred value. Safetyism, a term first used in the book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, denotes a moral culture in which people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns. As America debates when and how to reopen, those concerned about the side effects of the lockdown have begun to use the word “ safetyism” to characterize what they consider extreme social-distancing measures.

The coddling of the american mind