When Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, announced last week that the paper's opinion section would shift its focus to promoting "personal liberties and free markets," many Democrats and progressives were apoplectic.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont berated Bezos as an "oligarch" who was imposing "Trump right wing" values on Washington's foremost newspaper, while Marty Baron, the former editor of both The Post and The Globe, said he "couldn't be more sad and disgusted" by the announcement. The Poynter Institute's senior media writer, Tom Jones, suggested that Bezos might be "purposely trying to sabotage the reputation of The Washington Post." And Jeff Stein, The Post's chief economics writer, fumed that the new mandate amounts to a "massive encroachment" into the paper's opinion section and swore he would quit "if Bezos tries interfering with the news side."
Some reactions were really unhinged. The left-wing New Republic blasted Bezos for engineering a "sick MAGA takeover" of the Post. Progressive commentator Keith Olbermann seethed that Bezos has declared "the paper utterly fascist." And Slate's senior writer Justin Peters derided the mogul as one of the "craven big-money chickens**ts to whom democracy only ever mattered as part of a marketing slogan."
 The Washington Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, has said the paper's editorial focus will switch to 'personal liberties and free markets.' |
To be fair, I can understand some of this. Last fall Bezos ordered the Post's editorial page editor to kill a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris; then, after the election, he and his fiancée journeyed to Mar-a-Lago to pay court to President-elect Trump and pledge $1 million to his inaugural fund. Considering how aggressively the Post had opposed Trump over the previous nine years, it's not surprising that some Trump foes wondered if Bezos had decided to blow up everything they valued most about his paper.
I think that's unlikely, but who knows? Maybe Bezos will indeed steer The Post into "embracing all MAGA, all the time," as my friend Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, forewarned the other day. Or maybe Bezos values the independence and vitality of the Post's voice as strongly as ever, but is trying to make the best of a bad situation — balancing the paper's need for editorial independence against the threat posed by a vengeful and uninhibited president.
Still, I cannot see anything objectionable in Bezos's description of the change coming to his paper's opinion section. "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets," he wrote. "We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others."
What's wrong with that? Why would anyone this side of the authoritarian right or the radical left object to a full-throated commitment to "personal liberties and free markets"? I think that's an admirable flag for the Post, or any paper, to sail under. It plainly doesn't amount to pledging unwavering support for Trump. Quite the opposite: With the new president launching trade wars, blocking peaceful refugees, undermining Congress's lawful spending authority, filing lawsuits against media outlets that criticize him, subjecting deported migrants to inhumane treatment in Guantánamo cells, and even declaring himself — perhaps as a joke, perhaps not — to be a "king," there could hardly be a better time for the arrival of a prominent media defender of "personal liberties and free markets."
Not everything can be viewed through the lenses of political and economic freedom. Reasonable people can agree on the importance of "personal liberties and free markets" without necessarily supporting or opposing the Trump administration's approach to, say, health care, defense spending, or birthright citizenship. Even without the complicating element of partisan politics, individuals who share a commitment to freedom can disagree profoundly on how to translate it into policy.
For example, does defending "personal liberty" mean supporting the right to abort a healthy pregnancy — or supporting the right of a healthy fetus to be born? When the Department of Justice moves to block willing companies from merging, is it upholding free markets by preserving competition — or hampering the market's ability to deliver lower prices to consumers? Elon Musk claims that "the only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges" — yet to someone equally committed to libertarian ideals, that might seem a grave assault on the rule of law.
Bottom line: If Bezos's new marching orders are obeyed, the Post will find plenty in Trump 2.0 to criticize. Thus, when the administration picks a fight with a city like Boston for not jailing people because of their immigration status, we should expect The Washington Post to firmly defend the city on the grounds of "personal liberties and free markets." The same goes for Trump's unilateral imposition of punitive tariffs on US allies, his denial of access to news organizations because of their views, and his order to cut off security clearances for law firms that represent clients he doesn't like.
Bezos faces a litmus test of his own making. If, as he says, the opinion pages of the Post are focused "every day in support and defense of ... personal liberties and free markets" — then they will inevitably be calling Trump and his administration to account. For while some of the new administration's policies may be geared to expanding liberty, others are anything but.
To quote Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and scholar of constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute: "The fundamental problem with Trump's administration is that the modest good he is doing on a few issues is massively outweighed by the immense scale of the harm, which includes massive trade wars with nearly all major trade partners, the most draconian immigration restrictions in modern history ... and undermining the Western alliance."
Trump himself is far from a defender of personal liberties and free markets. It will be the job of the Post's editorial page to say so in the months and years ahead.
Assuming, that is, that Bezos is as good as his word. We'll know soon enough.
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My neighbor's sidewalk: To shovel or not to shovel?
It has only snowed once since I wrote in Arguable recently about my elderly neighbor Tom, who is no longer able to shovel his own sidewalk but who fumes and fusses when my wife — the Official Snow Shoveler of the Jacoby Household™ — does the job for him. Fortunately the latest snowfall happened on a day when our younger son was around, so we could send him to take care of the shoveling next door. Tom doesn't object when our 21-year-old shovels his snow; indeed, he often insists on showing his appreciation with a generous tip.
 Readers weighed in with advice. |
But what do we do when our son isn't home and there is snow to be cleared from Tom's sidewalk? As I recounted last month, Tom used to use his snowblower to clear our sidewalk back in the day when he was healthier and our kids were young. It would feel wrong and unneighborly to just leave the snow for him to deal with now. Yet if he insists that he doesn't want a neighbor's help, maybe we're wrong to override his wishes and shovel for him anyway? And what are we supposed to do when he not only protests against being helped but also insists on giving us $100? (We donated the money in his honor to the nearby Catholic parish.)
It all added up to a dilemma that I asked for your help in resolving.
I received dozens of responses, many of them touching, wry, or humorous. (I have edited these excerpts for clarity and length).
"Your wife should continue to shovel the walk," emailed Robert M., an 83-year-old from Natick, "but just to be sure double-check if Tom is a Democrat." Michael B. also offered a thumbs-up: "You did the right thing. Well done. But I thought you would have moved to New Hampshire by now."
They were like most of my correspondents, who urged us to keep clearing Tom's snow. But some took a different view.
"If it makes Tom upset, I suggest you stop," wrote Stuart T., who explained that he is 74 and wouldn't like it either if someone in her 60s shoveled for him.
Another emailer, Sam T., acknowledged that our wish was to do a kindness, but challenged us to think about who gets to decide what kindness consists of.
"My wife and I discussed your dilemma," he told me. "We think that doing a kindness for someone who genuinely does not want you to do it is not being kind. If you think he's just saying it but actually appreciates it, go for it.... But otherwise, we think it's best to respect a person's request, difficult and uncomfortable as that may be."
An unexpected number of readers urged my wife and me to acquire a snow blower, the idea being that Tom's objection might be limited to seeing my wife manually hoisting snow shovel by shovel.
"I'd offer to buy your neighbor's old snow blower," Brian B. advised. "He might not object if your wife takes the easy route."
Wrote Phil K.: "Your neighbor probably comes from the school of thought that you don't let a lady shovel your sidewalk. Perhaps you could get yourself a snow blower and solve both your wife's and your neighbor's problem of how to get rid of the snow!"
But by far the dominant reaction from readers was to reflect or reminisce about neighbors of their own.
Len G., a California reader originally from Massachusetts, urged us to keep donating to the church and to keep helping Tom with the snow, recalling his younger days in Needham, when "neighbors and I often shared shoveling duty."
Lawrence H. has neighbors of 30 years' standing who sometimes ask for help with taking out their trash or collecting their mail, then inevitably bring over a small gift or some baked goods as a thank-you. "I'd like to tell them that it is unnecessary to make even that token gesture. We're neighbors; that's what we do."
Snow isn't a concern for Jacquetta B., a widow in Wimberly, Texas. But she appreciates her neighbors' assistance with other things. "Neighbors always make sure my lawn is mowed and refuse to let me pay them — although I always try by baking them cookies or making a donation to our local food bank." She described a group of men and women in her local Baptist church who call themselves "The Carpenter's Helpers" and make it their business to do minor home repairs or take care of simple yard work for elderly or infirm neighbors. "They do jobs that are so small a contractor doesn't want to mess with it. As a Christian, I think the help they provide is truly what we are supposed to do."
Far from Texas, Mike D. wrote to express the uncalculated reciprocity of Downeast neighborliness: "When my neighbors in Maine are in need of help, I help. They also have returned the favor many times. Your neighbor seems to be self conscious about losing his independence and self-sufficiency, a very New England trait."
To close, here is a slightly longer message from reader Robbie R.
"My wife and I have a neighbor across the street in our rural area who is happy as punch to help us out when we have problems," Robbie writes.
Our problems have at times been utter disasters (an outbuilding burned almost to the ground; a leak in our water tank flooded and froze; an ash tree came down in a 95 mph windstorm). Every single time our neighbor Dirk was there to help us get the problems corrected. They weren't his problems, but his explanation was that he was being just neighborly.
We can do little to return the favor and demonstrate that we also believe in loving our neighbor as ourselves. Dirk has far more expertise, knowledge, and equipment to deal with our issues and simply wouldn't need our help if he were to experience a similar disaster. So we try to show our appreciation in other ways. I return his trash can to his yard after it has been emptied by the refuse service (even if the weather is frightful). I keep an eye out for anything amiss on his property if he is gone. I look out for his mother, who is in her 80's and ailing.
After a recent snowstorm that dumped 15 inches of snow on us, Dirk used his backhoe to clear the end of our driveway so we could get our car out. In appreciation we gave Dirk a loaf of my wife's butterscotch banana bread.
Well, I realize that the best thing we did for Dirk that day was give him that banana bread. As he opened the cab a big grin split his face as I handed it to him — and the words "thank you" coming from his mouth made me feel that we too could say that we loved our neighbor in the best way possible.
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What I Wrote Then
25 years ago on the op-ed page
From "Clinton fatigue is all too real," March 2, 2000:
The ABC/Washington Post poll asked respondents whether they agree or disagree with the statement "I'm just plain tired of Bill Clinton." Last September and again last month, majorities agreed....
Not only are Americans fed up with this president who has done so much to degrade the public discourse, they wish he had never been elected in the first place. If the 1992 election were held again, asked a Fox News poll last March, would you vote for Clinton or [George H.W.] Bush? Remarkably, 58 percent said Bush.
Presidential campaigns are complex affairs; the 2000 race will not turn on "Clinton fatigue" alone. But that fatigue is unmistakable. As Americans go about the business of choosing a new president, it will be a priority for many to get the sour taste of the old one out of their mouths.
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The Last Line
"A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves." — John Fowles, The Magus (1965)
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Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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