Foreign desk: How I Fell in Love With Hong Kong

Some Chinese mainlanders are harshly criticizing Hong Kongers for “marching for autonomy from Chinese Communist rule and for democracy” — but they don’t understand the benefits of Hong Kong’s “rule of law, vibrant free press and freedom of associations” that Ying Ma came to know while there, she writes at NBC. The “largest newspaper” in the city “ran some of the most trenchant editorials on the future of Hong Kong and Chinese politics.” News programs talked about “real issues that affected the lives and livelihood of real people.” Every year, “large crowds gathered to commemorate pro-democracy protestors” who were “slaughtered” in Tiananmen Square. “In the images of millions upon millions of Hong Kongers marching peacefully for a better future, I see the Hong Kong I fell in love with.”

From the left: Rank-and-File Will Stand by Biden

Joe Biden may need “some Windex for his glass jaw,” but “his supporters are perfectly willing to sweep up the pieces and write off his not-so-infrequent missteps,” Goldie Taylor notes at the Daily Beast. He has an “affable, self-deprecating style” and is “equally at ease” anywhere. Despite being “best known for his uncanny ability to botch a stump speech,” Biden’s supporters are “a pragmatic, deeply loyal voting bloc,” able to chalk off those fumbles and criticisms of the candidate’s legislative record. “Biden has been on the national public stage for over three decades and, in that time, voters feel like they’ve gotten to know him.” If he falters, it will be because the voters who support him “coalesced behind someone else.”

Supreme Court watch: It’s Liberals in Lockstep

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment was supposed to “lead to a conservative majority running roughshod over core liberal concerns,” but, Ilya Shapiro quips in USA Today, “a funny thing happened on the road to the apocalypse”: Kavanaugh has “demonstrated a pragmatic approach” — while the liberals have voted together “much more than the conservatives.” Of 67 Supreme Court decisions last term, “the four justices appointed by Democratic presidents voted the same way 51 times, while the five Republican appointees held tight 37 times.” That’s nothing new — in the 2014-15 term,“the four liberals stuck together in 55 of 66 cases, while the four conservatives (not counting Kennedy) voted as a unit in 39.” Instead of “decrying the Roberts Five,” it’s more accurate to think of “the Ginsberg Four,” voting in lockstep “toward progressive policy outcomes.”

Culture beat: Youth Playact on the Environment

“Youth will save the planet,” at least according to “the elite narrative about global warming,” observes Heather Mac Donald in the City Journal. The truth? “Youth’s transformative commitment to radical environmental change” is “bunk.” “People give up what they’re willing to give up” — and “young people are no different.” Most young people would, if they could, reach the same “flamboyant level of energy use” as their favorite “celebrity Greens,” each with a “cavalcade of yachts and private jets.” Mac Donald notes that younger generations freely use gadgets that require “resources, nature-altering infrastructure and dependable energy structures.” Instead of “moral righteousness,” she argues, we should instill a “zeal-tempering humility” in our young people — and recognize that “un-natural prosperity” is what “underwrites environmental playacting.”

Liberal: The Left Should Push Economic Growth

“Liberals and the left need” to take back “the cause of economic growth,” Noah Smith opines at Bloomberg. “Free-marketers” on the right have pushed their “recipe for growth” (“cut taxes, reduce social spending and eliminate regulation”). But there are ways to “increase growth and equality at the same time,” by investing in “public goods,” like education and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the “free-market growth strategy” has “produced disappointing results.” So rather than “surrender the mantle of growth to their ideological opponents,” the left should align “the incentives of workers and capitalists,” and promote growth that “happens in a way that protects the environment instead of despoiling it.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann