The modern liberal’s quest for equality over liberty takes many forms, and you can count on the editorialists at The New York Times to promote them all, sooner or later. Today, they’re urging the Pentagon to “officially integrate small armor and infantry units with women.”

Why? Well, female soldiers, they note, are already involved in de facto combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least peripherally. But the main reason, they make clear, is that women’s “careers are crimped as leadership promotions flowed more to men with combat experience.” Indeed, the editors tell us that the March 7 report of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission found “ethnic, gender and cultural problems hindering career advancement in the military,” leading the Times to aver that “the nation’s female soldiers deserve a fair chance at advancement.”

Never mind the Israeli experience with women in combat. (There’s a nation that can’t afford social experiments in its military.) The Times dismisses objections as mere “shibboleths.” And not at all do the editors acknowledge that our military has one and only one function – not global law enforcement, not humanitarian intervention, certainly not facilitator of equal-opportunity career advancement, but to protect our liberties against threats from abroad, by means that will ensure that end, swiftly and with the least cost to our soldiers and ourselves.