Being Nonjudgmental:

My friend and colleague Stephen Bainbridge writes:

[W]e have a WSJ($) column today by former Joe Lieberman aide Dan Gerstein, who explains that “the Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars” because they have:

… a profound aversion to making moral judgments. And that’s the nub of the values problem for Democrats today. We don’t hesitate to judge people’s beliefs, but we blanch at judging their behavior. That leaves us silent on big moral issues at a time of great moral uncertainty, and leaves the impression that we are the party of “anything goes.”

I don’t buy it. It seems to me that liberals in fact not only “don’t hesitate to judge people’s beliefs,” but they also don’t “blanch at judging [certain people’s] behavior.” In other words, the Democrats have become “the party of ‘anything goes'” precisely because they are ready to judge anybody who thinks some things should remain out of bounds.

(Go to the blog post for more.)

I’ve always been puzzled by claims that some groups are “nonjudgmental” about political or moral matters while others are “judgmental,” whether the claims are about belief or about behavior. (Warning: I couldn’t read the original piece, so perhaps Gerstein is making a much more nuanced claim; I’m just using the quote as given by Stephen as an example of the kind of broad argument that I’ve often heard.)

One can certainly be nonjudgmental — in the sense of not judging whether people are right or wrong, at least in a moral sense — on certain matters, such as esthetics or similar tastes. (I may judge that people who dislike custard are missing out on a great taste, but I wouldn’t say they’re immoral, foolish, or more broadly wrong for not liking custard.) More controversially, one can be nonjudgmental about people’s interest in various sexual practices, even though others are judgmental about these matters. One can also be more or less judgmental in one’s interactions with people, in the sense of not expressing one’s judgments of their moral behavior. One can imagine, for instance, concluding that a friend needs sympathy and help, unmixed with expressions of judgment about whether the friend behaved badly (at least if the behavior isn’t too bad).

But surely one must be judgmental in political life on a wide range of topics. Liberals have long expressed negative judgments about people for various beliefs (racism, intolerance, desire to suppress certain civil liberties, lack of sympathy for the poor) and for corresponding actions. Conservatives have done the same, on a set of beliefs and actions that in some measure overlaps with the liberals but in some measure differs, especially in intensity; likewise with libertarians. In fact Democrats are not “silent on big moral issues” — unless one thinks that war, equality, liberty, economic rights and obligations, and the like aren’t big moral issues.

They may be silent or relatively quiet as to some moral issues (e.g., the moral question of whether one ought to get an abortion, rather than the moral question of whether the law should stop women from getting abortions). But that’s because of a judgment about which moral issues (and which forms of conduct) are fit for political judgment, not a judgment that one ought not judge people’s conduct.

There’s of course nothing wrong with being judgmental as such. There may be something wrong with being judgmental on certain matters. Again, a trivial example is people judging others because of which flavor of ice cream they prefer, or for that matter judging them morally — rather than esthetically — based on whether they like classical music; there are naturally other more controversial examples.

But it is wrong, I think, to claim — or to bemoan — that one’s side is nonjudgmental on great moral issues generally (as opposed to a few issues in particular). Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and others are judgmental, and right to be judgmental. The debate should be about what we should judge, and what our judgments ought to be.