Wow, generally agree with most of what you said there War...Though I'd say that every issue appears to be intractable if you approach it from the conclusions first.
For instance, on abortion you have two camps who are firmly pro-life or pro-choice. They do hold an emotional connection to these positions, and are completely unwilling to change their minds.
But if you can get to the bottom of the 'why' they believe those things, the problem becomes less and less intractable. Abortion is an easy example because the core problem is clearly an issue of 'when do the cells become a person'.
The problem is when people refuse to examine the fundamental reasons for their positions, and instead advance one conclusion or the other for strictly tribal reasons.
Now people will always claim that they're doign so based on evidence, but taking myself as an example, look how long I argued for 'conclusions' on this very board that I later had to admit I hadn't properly examined the fundamentals. Didn't change how passionately I argued for my conclusions, and at the time I would've given numerous examples of 'evidence' that supported my case, all the while being more or less ignorant on the topics.