The Federalist posted an article today with the title, “Why Joe Biden Can’t Restore Unity.”
The article explains:
Biden, however, will not oversee the restoration of national unity—whatever that actually means—because our culture now operates on a bloated definition of bigotry that unjustly implicates decent people in the evils of racism, sexism, violence, and hatred. Biden and his administration accept this definition and will consequently fan the flames.
They already have. On Wednesday, Biden set out to sign an executive order that would prohibit the federal government from “discriminat[ing] on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” His list of Day One executive orders also included several measures on “diversity” and “equity.” This innocuous language masks intensely charged policies built to enforce the left’s standards by rendering dissent hateful.
Biden deliberately delivered an inaugural address that steered clear of “deplorable” language, but enforcing a definition of “gender identity” that requires people to accept of cultural leftism or face charges of violence and hatred basically has the same effect. Decent people disagree on this matter and on others, but the left’s current progressive-or-bigot binary formulation reflexively defines many decent people as bigots.
The article concudes:
Bigotry is, of course, still alive in this country. But it dwells not in the hearts of the vast majority of conservatives and centrists and even authentic leftists who happen to disagree on particular questions of race and sex. Biden and The New York Times don’t need to agree with the conservative agenda to foster some sense of unity. They merely need to dispense with the notion that dissenters from cultural leftism are necessarily bigots.
Hyperbole is obviously an immutable feature of political rhetoric. That sense of unity Biden wishes to recapture, however, will elude us until the cultural left abandons its bloated definitions of bigotry. It’ll require more than a letter in Harper’s or a Boomer president who waxes poetic about serving “all Americans.”
This is about our institutions purging their dominant cultural ethos and cleaning up the pipeline. At best, it will take many years and a lot more than presidential platitudes.
It is naive to expect the country to unified when there is fundamental disagreement on moral issues. Many Americans, myself included, believe that abortion is murder. We believe that homosexuality is in conflict with Biblical Christianity. We don’t want to hurt those who have had abortions or those who are homosexual, but we just cannot support their choice. We want the freedom to live with our beliefs while extending them the freedom to live with their beliefs. Until both sides of the spectrum stop calling names, unity is impossible.