Judging from copious commentary on social media and from President Biden’s actions, the Left has a disturbingly Orwellian idea of what “unity” means. They have no right, however, to change the very meaning of words. They won’t get away with it.
Alas, there is not a single issue, not one, on which Biden so far has built on common ground with Republicans or conservatives. Instead, he continues imposing policies that aren’t just liberal but leftist, all by extravagant use of executive fiat. His objectively disunifying actions both deserve and will receive strenuous political pushback.
Biden ran a whole campaign on the need to seek “unity,” and, of course, it was the central theme of his inaugural address. Indeed, his speech used the words “unity” or “uniting” 14 times. He acts, though, as if unity means that he dictates the policy and that everybody else must unite in line behind him. Judging from my Twitter feed, that’s also what a lot of his liberal supporters think unity means.
Fat chance.
If President Donald Trump had used “unity” that way, liberals and the establishment media would have had conniption fits. When Trump signed four executive orders in his first week, Hades broke loose as if he were a dictator. Including Trump, all the presidents going back to Jimmy Carter in 1976 issued a combined total of only 13 first-week executive orders. Biden issued 22 executive orders in his first week (and the total is now beyond 30!), including a manifestly unlawful one, now blocked temporarily in court, prohibiting deportation of any illegal immigrants.
Except for one on ethics and a few doing obvious pandemic-related things such as the vague order to federal agencies to “identify actions they can take within existing authorities to address the current economic crisis resulting from the pandemic,” Biden’s orders have been uniformly divisive and ideological. Indeed, some have contravened strong public opinion, with fewer than 30% agreeing with his order that could allow biological males to compete in girls sports. Similarly, just 36% support his order to shut down the Keystone pipeline.
Divisive one-person edicts in a representative republic are the very opposite of unifying. Someone who really seeks “unity” would find something on which he and his erstwhile opponents actually share common ground. This isn’t to say Biden should jettison his beliefs to adopt conservative positions; it means he should find areas of broad agreement where his stance already is near that of Republicans. In a prior column, I identified veterans care, mental healthcare, administrative-state reforms, and reforms of the judicial selection process as areas of potential concord. Likewise, although I personally am not high on the idea, a broad majority supports new spending on roads and bridges; if Biden proposes a thoughtfully targeted infrastructure package that doesn’t send fiscal conservatives into fury, he could unify people rather easily.
Again, though, Biden has not yet done, either by order or by legislative proposal, a single thing of unifying substance. The relevant (nonmathematical, nonphysical) definition of “unity” at Dictionary.com is “oneness of mind, feeling, etc., as among a number of persons; concord, harmony, or agreement.” One doesn’t achieve harmony by flouting the views of majorities or by immediately embracing culture war items that enrage the other side.
Even liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg writes approvingly that, as the subheadline put it, “so far, Joe Biden has been surprisingly progressive.” In a nation in which only 26% self-identify even as “liberal” (much less “progressive,”), while 70% call themselves “moderate” (36%) or “conservative” (34%), being “surprisingly progressive” is as disunifying as can be imagined.
