Left-Wing Snobs and the Style of Contempt

Political impotence doesn’t always weaken the critical faculties, and some degree of aloofness from the well-known corruptions of power and money is essential for an independent social observer. Less known, though, is the effect on those faculties of going years without a chance that your ideas might be realized, of never having to ask yourself what you would do in such-and-such a situation if you had the power to do something. Without occasional exercise in the world, political writing tends to atrophy. Faced with their own long-term irrelevance, critics on the American left are confronted with several ways out, none of them satisfying.

They can make their meek adjustments and position themselves more opportunely—maybe no...