The instinct to side with the underdog arises, at least in part, from the guilty pleasure of pity—the feeling of superiority that the sensation of pity almost automatically confers. Pity, it turns out, is not a form of sympathy, or empathy, or a genuinely humane concern for the misfortunes of others. On the contrary, pity is really a form of self-congratulation, an act of condescension, a sublimated type of narcissism. Little wonder, then, that the politics of pity should thrive in what the late Christopher Lasch called our culture of narcissism.

— Bret Stephens