Thread by @bartbarber

I applaud @JoeBiden’s call for greater unity and civility in American politics. For many topics, this should reasonably be within reach.

Immigration: there is no reason whatsoever for Republicans to oppose LEGAL immigration, as the Trump administration has done. Our economy thrives when we have healthy immigration policies, and the election results show clearly that many immigrants vote GOP.

Middle East: There is no reason for Democrats to dismantle President Trump’s very successful pro-Israel policy in the Middle East. Eschatology does not require a pro-Israel posture, but common sense does.

Stimulus: If President-Elect Biden plans to impose COVID-19 restrictions that will hobble the economy, additional stimulus will be necessary.

Race relations: Things don’t have to be this tense. They haven’t always been. I’m hopeful a new administration will tone things down and take the microphone away from extremists.

But there are two other categories of issues: those for which unity is unlikely, and those for which unity is actually impossible.

LGBTQ issues: The fiction that a man becomes a woman because he says so is untenable. Even the majority of the people who kowtow to this do not actually believe it. They’ve just come to believe that it would be rude to affirm reality out loud.

I myself don’t go door-to-door to stage you’re-really-still-a-man interventions. But government initiatives to force people to affirm what they know is a lie are unhealthy and doomed to failure. Compromise is not possible on this. One view or the other must prevail.

I’d support going with the science. :-)

Also along these lines, @JoeBiden could help end the assault by the Left upon Christian social services. There’s something wicked about complaining that the Evangelical Right is stingy and meanspirited while simultaneously shuttering Christian foster care, adoption…

…and crisis pregnancy centers just because they are pro-life and pro-natural-marriage. If we Evangelicals don’t really care about people as alleged, then you shouldn’t need men with guns to keep us from being charitable to the neediest people among us, right?

And if we do really care about people, wouldn’t preventing us from helping those in need call into question your own priorities?

Abortion: let’s stop this nonsense by which people equivocate abortion with other perils families face. Only with abortion does the state sanction (or even fund!) killing an innocent person against her will, usually just because she’s inconvenient.

Opposition to this barbarity isn’t going away. @KamalaHarris’s efforts to put people in jail for telling the truth about #PlannedParenthoodSellsBabyParts are weak and futile. Unity is unlikely here.

Capitalism: I’m hopeful that @JoeBiden will stick to his guns against the socialist movement in his own party. Our country needs robust free-market capitalism coupled with strong personal generosity. Capitalism produces unequal improvement for everyone.

For example, capitalism has created an American society in which every street corner has someone with a smartphone and an Internet connection. This, not protest marches, has changed policing forever.

Capitalism lifts the lives of immigrants. It generates miraculous medical treatments for the sick. Generous capitalists help meet the needs of poor people in their own country and beyond.

If we care about people, we should prefer unequal improvement for everyone over the equally dismal outcomes produced by collectivism. There are no middle ways; there are only rest stops on the way to dismantling capitalism.

Religious Liberty: governments do not grant religious liberty because they are magnanimous; they do so because history teaches the impossibility of preventing people from living out the dictates of their faith.

There can be no compromise with those whose approach to the Constitution is to prioritize invented “rights” that are nowhere in the text of the Constitution over the rights clearly articulated in black and white in the First Amendment.

Let religious liberty extend to all Americans as it should.

If President-Elect @JoeBiden will lead in these areas of agreement and withdraw on these areas of contention, better days of harmony can come to our nation. This will require courage and tenacity on his part. I pray that he will have it.