The Tyranny of the “-Phobia” Word

How a Diagnostic Label Replaced Argument—and Why We Now Retreat Instead of Think

There was a time—one scarcely dares to remember it—when language existed to clarify thought. Increasingly, it exists to evade it. Few developments better capture this decline than the rise of the rhetorical “-phobia,” a suffix that has escaped the confines of clinical psychology and now operates as a kind of intellectual kill switch.

“Islamophobia” is am…