Conservative: Biden Admin Falling on Its Face

It’s not just President Biden’s falls and growing feebleness, argues Dominic Green at the Washington Examiner; Secretary of State Antony Blinken “looks like the Ghost of Hegemony Past” and only “23% of Europeans think their country should support the U.S. in a war with China over Taiwan, while 62% want to remain neutral.” US allies no longer believe they can rely on Washington in the wake of things like the US “failure to respond to the Iranian seizure of two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz in late April and early May.” Big picture: “Blinken and a chorus of sleepwalkers recite phrases such as ‘the rules-based international order,’ but you will have no order if you fail to enforce your rules.”

Navy vet: The Military-Recruitment Crisis

We’re in “the worst recruiting crisis in the history” of the 50-year-old all-volunteer force, warns Carol Stoker at Spectator World: “The Army, Navy, and Air Force will all miss their fiscal year 2023 enlistment goals” after the Army fell 25% short the year before. One key issue: a false perception “the military is failing to be sufficiently diverse.” In fact, “Military recruits are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before,” with African Americans and Hispanics overrepresented in the Army. Worse, needless new diversity, equity and inclusion mandates promoting “a culture focused upon differences such as skin color or gender damages a military reliant upon mission-focused unity and teamwork — not internal rivalry” — and harm “the trust of service members in the institution.”

Ukraine desk: What the Counteroffensive Means

“Unusually intense fighting” in eastern Ukraine plus drone attacks in Moscow and “raids inside Russia”: “What does it all mean?” asks The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum. “The Ukrainian counteroffensive has begun” — and it will “look different from the D-Day movies because Ukraine’s goals are not merely military.” Ukrainians “are also conducting a sort of psychological shaping operation: They have to convince the Russian elite that the war was a mistake and that Russia can’t win it,” without “a full-scale invasion of Russia, without occupying Moscow, and without a spectacular Russian surrender in Red Square.” So while “this Ukrainian counteroffensive is, so far, disappointing fans of panoramic drama, set-piece battles, and heroic tales,” remember “the true purpose of the counteroffensive is not your entertainment.”

Culture critic: The New Right’s Rehashed Marxism

Patrick Deneen’s new book, “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future,” “contains all the faults of” his last, “Why Liberalism Failed,” but “adds one: dishonesty,” blasts The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim. The Notre Dame prof’s “shallow and tendentious” tome “leaves the impression that no serious conservative writer in the past hundred years defended the values and habits of unlearned people.” But “this theme is basic to the conservatism” he “ridicules as ‘right-liberalism.’” It’s just that in “the world he prefers, conservatives use state power for their own ends and don’t have to worry about what progressives will do with that power when they get it.” Deneen “and his fellow common-gooders,” “happily echoing Karl Marx’s criticism,” are “model progressives,” believing the solution to “any social or political problem, however tangled, is to put us in charge.” But “I would rather be ruled by the first 2,000 people in the phone book than by Patrick Deneen and his pals.”

Libertarian: Cali Conservatives’ NIMBYism

When “a conservative politician uses the term ‘local control,’” grumbles Steven Greenhut in Reason, it’s not “about limiting government. It’s an excuse for empowering bureaucrats.” Look at the “hissy fit” conservatives are throwing over Huntington Beach, “which is challenging” California “housing reforms that force cities to approve housing projects on a ‘by right’ basis”: “If builders meet basic standards, they are free to build these projects.” Conservatives, “who argue bureaucrats have too much discretionary power,” should embrace the reforms. In Huntington Beach, however, “‘local control’ is not their principle” — “NIMBYism is.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board