It’s nice to see Jeff Bezos take control of the Washington Post’s editorial page, which in classical newspapering is supposed to speak the mind of its owner. Mr. Bezos declares that the Post editorial team will be writing, among other things, “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Why he didn’t do that sooner is a mystery, but we’re in no position to tell Mr. Bezos how to earn a living. Besides, he’s come in at a good moment.

We say that because the Democrats are so at sea — and yet offer some terrific teaching moments. One is in a speech President Carter delivered at Notre Dame’s commencement in May 1977. That’s where Carter marked the link between prosperity and freedom. “The great democracies are not free because we are strong and prosperous,” he declared. “I believe we are strong and influential and prosperous because we are free.”

We sent a wire to one of President Carter’s erstwhile speech writers, Hendrik Hertzberg, to see whether he might have had something to do with Carter’s fabulous formulation. We’ll update if we hear back. We’ve also been thinking about “Ten Days That Shook the World.” That’s the title of John Reed’s epic report from the Bolshevik Revolution. The book tells the story of, among other things, how press freedom was lost in the Soviet era.

It was one of the freedoms suspended on the first day of the ten days that shook the world. Soon, though, one of the noble comrades spoke up to suggest that it was time to restore press freedom. That put the committee into a terrible swivet, until Lenin himself arose and unburdened himself as follows: “Now that the insurrection is over we have absolutely no desire to suppress the papers of the other Socialist parties…

“However, we shall not permit them, under the pretence of freedom of the Socialist press, to obtain through the secret support of the bourgeoisie, a monopoly of printing-presses, ink, and paper … These essentials must become the property of the Soviet Government, and be apportioned, first of all to the Socialist parties in strict proportion to their voting strength.” The vote, Reed reported, carried Lenin’s motion by 34 to 24. 

Reed’s report offers one of the clearest glimpses in all of journalism of the imperishable link between liberty and property. It was brought to us by, in Reed, a courageous journalist who was in the process of being disillusioned by the Soviet Union, where, to this day, his remaining remains remain buried in the Kremlin Wall. If he hadn’t perished, he’d have been a good member of Mr. Bezos’s new editorial board. 

Then there’s the Democrat we liked the best. The AFL-CIO’s Lane Kirkland, too, is gone now, and rarely referenced, but he helped envision and lead the free trade union movement whose members answered not to a party, or a government, or a corporation but to a freely cast vote of its own union members. It helped nourish in the 1980s a little known labor union at Gdansk, Poland, called Solidarity, which rose up and cracked Soviet rule in the East Bloc.

We once remarked to Kirkland that “people say the Cold War was won by Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, and you.” To which Kirkland growled, “They had nothing to do with it.” We tell the story often in these columns because it’s important and we enjoy the brio with which he made his point. He was a happy warrior, as we hope the Post will become. We join the Wall Street Journal in saying welcome to the fight.