by Matthew Friedman | Feb 24, 2021 | Commentary
This week began with the news that the United States had surpassed 500,000 COVID-19 deaths. It seemed surreal, almost uncanny; the figure was just another mundane number in the accounting we have watched ticking off steadily – and then exponentially – over the last...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 17, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
At noon on Wednesday, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. will take the oath of office on the Capitol steps and become the 46th president of the United States. Millions of Americans will breathe a sigh of relief that four years of division, violence, and injustice perpetrated...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 10, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
The mob of maybe two thousand rioters, egged-on by the inflammatory rhetoric of their political leaders marched down the boulevards toward the government buildings with banners flying. They were going to take their country back from the leftist politicians who had...
by Matthew Friedman | Dec 26, 2020 | Commentary
My father and I arrived at Sam the Record Man in downtown Montreal around 10:30 am, after a late breakfast at Murray’s in Westmount. The Boxing Day crowds that lined up along Rue Ste-Catherine and around the block for hours in the December Chill to get first crack at...
by Matthew Friedman | Dec 13, 2020 | Essays
The cashier smiled and wished me a “merry Christmas.” I scowled back. It was the week just after Thanksgiving, and the supermarket staff were clearing away the last of the orange-and-brown remnants of Turkey Day advertising décor and replacing it with red, green,...
