In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman famously preened, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” After seeing the latest direct-mail solicitation from The New York Review of Books, we suddenly realized how brazenly Whitmanian—on the matter of contradiction, anyway—is that venerable organ of left-liberal orthodoxy.

Granted, appeals for subscriptions are a species of advertising. One expects a certain amount of trumpet-blowing and exhortation. There is nothing wrong with that. But in its latest communication the New York Review has moved from “please-buy-our-widget” rhetoric to inadvertent comedy. The Review’s letter begins by inviting readers to ponder the fate of cultural-political debate in America. “Most of the points of view you read and hear,” it solemnly informs us, “are those advanced by a bullying, bell ...

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