No, President Biden has not already renounced 'unity'
PRESIDENT BIDEN used his inaugural speech to issue a stirring call to unity. Then he signed a series of executive orders on climate change, LGBTQ rights, racial disparities and other controversial issues. For some critics, this was a contradiction. “President Biden promised unity,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted, “but his first action was to kill jobs.”
In fact, there was no contradiction. In the United States, unity does not mean that one side gets everything it wants.
In a dictatorship, unity is easy; one must agree with the leader on all matters or suffer state retribution. In a pluralistic democracy, unity is the “most elusive of things,” Mr. Biden said in his speech, because policy disagreement is at the core of the system. The president bears no more responsibility to surrender his principles on entering the Oval Office than Mr. Cotton does sitting in the Senate. Both men promised to represent voters’ beliefs on the national stage, and both should try to advance them. It is in the manner of trying where unity can be found in a democracy — unity of democratic values, purpose and process.
The nation’s political system is designed to manage and channel disagreement peacefully and, ideally, with a level of respect and decorum. Power shifts, and policies change accordingly, but everyone accepts these moves as legitimate because of an overriding allegiance to the system. That system ensures that no one gets everything they want and everyone has a fair chance to appeal to the people.
-more-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-president-biden-has-not-already-renounced-unity/2021/01/22/d36c8bda-5cec-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
