The Washington Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, is exiting as the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, steers the section in a libertarian direction.
In an email to The Post’s employees on Wednesday, Mr. Bezos said that Mr. Shipley was stepping down amid a narrowing of the opinion section’s focus to defend “personal liberties and free markets.”
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Mr. Bezos said. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.”
In his note, Mr. Bezos said that he asked Mr. Shipley whether he wanted to stay at The Post, and Mr. Shipley declined.
Not really. You can free yourself from many societal restrictions, but you can never be free from who you are and what you’ve done with your life. Nor can you be free from the social climate in which you exist.
Money can buy a lot of freedom, but it’s like an asymptote. The closer you get to complete freedom, the more you realize that it’s impossible to obtain, especially in modern society.