“In short, I am white, privileged, middle-aged and boring,” Stephen Metcalf in his rather startlingly vicious review of the Why I Turned Right anthology Stanley has been blogging about. “But one thing I am not, and never will be, is a conservative.”

This is a very revealing remark, especially from someone who says the book he’s reviewing should be subtitled “The Experience That Closed My Mind Forever.” Never will be a conservative? Part of the hallmark of having any sort of critical intelligence is being able to see how a set of ideological prescriptions you do not support could appeal to you at a different time in your life. On the other hand, given the ad-hominem philistinism of Metcalf’s piece, maybe the term “critical intelligence” should be deployed at some remove from his name.