Commentary The firing of Justin Shubow and three other members of the United States Fine Arts Commission (they refused to resign, having committed no fault) reveals something disturbing about democracy as it is at present constituted: namely how easily elites may override the express preferences of the majority of citizens, even in matters non-political. Shubow was the progenitor of President Trump’s executive order that henceforth the classical style of architecture should be the default style of all new federal buildings. This was soon condemned as dictatorial by the architectural lobby, though it was nothing of the kind. It did not decree that all buildings in America should be built in this style, only new federal ones, a tiny proportion of the total: unlike the modernist architects of the past who wanted to dictate the style of architecture for the whole world, and to a surprising and horrifying extent succeeded, with …