The Cowardice of ‘Who Are We to Judge?’

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, August 21, 2026

 

Who are we to decide?

 

In politics (and a bunch of other fields), this is one of the oldest and most important questions there is. And pretty much whenever I hear it, I hate it.

 

Most rhetorical questions are pretty obviously rhetorical. “Is the Pope Catholic?” rarely elicits a serious reply. “Why yes, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, aka the Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God is commonly understood to be Catholic.”

 

But a great many of the people who ask “Who are we to decide?” seem to sincerely not understand they are asking a rhetorical question.

 

Back when rhetoric meant something, Cicero discusses this question but did it in the way we understand rhetoric today. When he was a young man, he wrote De Inventione, a handbook for orators. And the question “Who are we to decide?” was a literal one about procedure. Was the Senate or some other body the proper venue to settle a question or redress a problem?

 

All the legal mumbo jumbo about whether someone has “standing” to sue can be traced back to this question (though I think the idea is older than Cicero). If you leave an upper decker in my bathroom, I have a legitimate complaint, but I don’t bring it to the Interstate Commerce Commission. If your poorly trained monkey-butler bites off my thumb, I don’t go to the judges of America’s Got Talent to demand compensation.

 

My point is, I have no problem with the question when it’s not a rhetorical question.

 

But a lot of politicians and intellectuals don’t ask the question as a question. They are making a statement in the form of a question. When was the last time you heard someone ask, “Who are we to decide?” or even “Who are we to judge?” and then follow up with, “Now that I think about it, us! We do!”

 

Idiomatically, politically, and rhetorically, the question is almost always a prelude to abdication or denial of responsibility. And sometimes that’s absolutely correct. If a kid petitions the Supreme Court to make his parents stop serving broccoli, the justices’ answer to the question of “Who are we to decide?” is “not us.”

 

So, again, that’s fine. My gripe is with the folks who deploy this rhetorical question when the answer is “us!” Indeed, the tactical avoidance behind the rhetorical question permeates a lot of our society. It’s in the groundwater. Foundations, museums, media outlets, and universities have got the bug. The idea of taking responsibility is unsettling to a lot of people with responsibilities. Sometimes the cop-out comes in the form of lip service to “democracy.” Sometimes it takes the shape of faux humility: “Who am I to tell you what’s right or wrong?”

 

There’s a fad in education called “ungrading.” Professors reject the idea that it’s their place to assign grades. “Ungrading reduces the power imbalance between instructor and student,” Carnegie Mellon University explains. “Ungrading embraces subjectivity and puts students in charge of their own learning.”

 

Tuition and room and board at Carnegie Mellon is $93,614. Perhaps some parents think they’re paying more for the power imbalance between instructor and student, and less for the self-learning. In one article, a professor at the University of Richmond rejoices in being “[f]reed from the tyranny of determining a grade.”

 

There’s a movement among museum curators to reject the old-fashioned notion that the person or persons in charge of a museum should have a special expertise or authority over the question of what belongs in a museum. That’s at least the upshot of this aptly titled paper, “‘Who are we to decide?’ Internal challenges to cultural authority in the contestation over human remains in British museums.”

 

In 2019, the four finalists for the prestigious Turner Prize for visual art petitioned the judges not to pick an ultimate winner. Each of the finalists dealt with different themes: “migration, patriarchy, torture and civil rights.” They didn’t want the judges to pit these issues against each other. The “overwhelmingly excited” judges unanimously agreed to the request.

 

In 2002, a survey of art critics found that only 27 percent of them cared very much about offering objective judgments about the quality of the art they were criticizing. Indeed, the critics ranked judgment as the least important aspect of criticism. Description was much more important. But “educating” the rubes about art was vital.

 

In philanthropy, there’s been a push for “participatory grantmaking,” which embraces “people power” and “changing the role of foundations from arbiters of what gets done to facilitators of a process.” Foundations should consider letting go, and “cede control and power.”

 

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman identified this trend in his 1987 book Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. His basic argument was that under modernity, intellectuals cast themselves as authorities or “legislators” concerned with absolute truth. Under postmodernism, the role of the intellectual was to “interpret” without offering concrete judgment on what the truth is, if it’s a thing at all.

 

But let’s leave the eggheadery and get to politics and journalism.

 

In Donald Trump’s second impeachment, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the evidence was clear: “There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” He went on like that for a while, but then said, “The Constitution gives us a particular role. This body is not invited to act as the nation’s overarching moral tribunal.”

 

In one sense that’s true. The Senate is not invited to act as the nation’s overarching moral tribunal, which is why it takes no stand on, say, the adultery of a shoe salesman in Bayonne, New Jersey. But the Constitution does assign responsibility to the Senate—as a tribunal—during impeachment cases.

 

In 2024, when the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Minnesota Star Tribune suddenly decided not to endorse a presidential candidate, the “Who are we to decide?” vibe was very strong. The Star Tribune said its job is to provide a range of voices, “not simply one institutional voice above all others.” But it assured readers, “We will continue to use our opinion pages to shine a bright light on leadership and hold it accountable.”

 

The Post’s publisher at the time, Will Lewis, said, “We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as an abdication of responsibility. We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for, a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”

 

The LA Times, where I’ve been a columnist for nearly 20 years, offered similar explanations.

 

Now, I think newspapers are free to endorse or not endorse candidates as they see fit. But when they break with established practice in the lead-up to an election, and justify it on the grounds that it’s not their job to tell their readers what the editorial board actually thinks, it screams “Who are we to decide?”

 

At the same time, I think it’s ironic that the complaints from the left about these decisions ran against the spirit of the anti-elite judgmentalism they embrace in so many other areas.

 

We don’t have the space to get deep into the tragic Jason Arday mess, but it’s amazing how many people seem to think it’s racist or otherwise outrageous that anyone would have offered criticisms of the man. Having an informed opinion about his scholarship—or lack thereof—is not illegitimate or sinful simply because it is “hurtful” or inconvenient.

 

But I should be clear. This isn’t a purely left-wing phenomenon. We live in a populist age. And much of the right is just as besotted with anti-elite, anti-republican rage.

 

Rather than drown you in Trumpian rhetoric and jabroni tweets, or opine on the sudden capitulation to data center moral panic, I’ll give you one example that still rankles. When National Review published its now unfairly infamous “Against Trump” issue, the pro-Trump populist right lost its collective mind. One Fox News personality after another was appalled or baffled by the effrontery of National Review, an opinion magazine, to render an opinion on Donald Trump’s fitness for office. “The National Review needs to get in line with the rest of the Republicans. How dare they trash the frontrunner Donald Trump!” shrieked Jeanine Pirro. Harris Faulkner was scandalized. “These words should disturb every American,” she said on air. She then quoted National Review’s editorial: “He [Trump] is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries.”

 

Then she asked, “Whose job is it to decide who gets to be where? It’s the voters who decide. It is not any particular party. That’s offensive on its face.”

 

Please. Put away the fainting couch.

 

I mean, are we to believe that no one at Fox ever renders judgments about who should or shouldn’t be in office? Who can forget all the times Faulkner, Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, et al. said it wasn’t for them to decide or offer an opinion on Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris?

 

In Federalist 10, James Madison lays out the arguments for both democracy and republicanism. The arguments for democracy aren’t worth rehearsing here because we live in an age of democratization of everything, from museums and classrooms to newspapers, parties, and even impeachments. What’s forgotten is the republican stuff.

 

Madison explains that the value of republican government is that it takes democratic sentiment and filters it “through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” Leaders in the new republic needed to be “proper guardians of the public weal.” Such proper guardians may be incorrect in their judgments and opinions—that’s unavoidable. But their guardianship is grounded in their judgment.

 

If their judgment is wrong, you can vote against them. If the critic’s judgment is wrong, don’t read him. If the museum’s choices are bad, don’t patronize the museum. As Yuval Levin has argued time and again, the first obligation of anyone in a position of responsibility is to ask “What is my role here?” The answer to that question is not “How can I avoid responsibility?” or “How can I avoid criticism?” or even “How can I keep my job?”

 

This was Edmund Burke’s whole point in his speech to the electors of Bristol. “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

 

All of the politicians and “intellectuals” who dodge offering an opinion on Trump, Ken Paxton, Graham Platner, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Hasan Piker, democratic socialists, etc., by offering platitudes about “letting the voters decide” (or yammering about how so-and-so has a “right to say” something even if they disagree with it), are betraying republican virtue by hiding behind the vices of democracy wrongly understood. The voters will still get to decide, regardless of your answer to the question. The poltroons and demagogues will have the right to say poltroonish and demagogic things too.

 

The ethos of “Who are we to decide?” I am describing isn’t primarily humble, humane, intellectual, or even democratic. It’s cowardly. It holds one’s convictions hostage to the opinions of the mob and the dictates of fashion. It sides with the “realism” of Callicles over the judgment of Socrates. After all, who was Socrates to offer his inconvenient judgment?