by Matthew Friedman | Jul 4, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Essays
The sky over Camp Wooden Acres in St-Adolphe-d’Howard, Quebec erupted in color and light; the flashes and trails of the fireworks reflected in the lake below. It was 4 July, and we had had a similar pyrotechnic display just three nights earlier. But these fireworks...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 30, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Commentary
This is my Canada Day confession: I lost my “us“ about a decade ago, along with my “res“ and my “gues.” I stubbornly held onto them throughout graduate school in the United states, and I even have a footnote in my dissertation about my preference for “theatre“ rather...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 24, 2025 | Behind the Lines
I’ve been drinking a bit more beer than usual, lately. I blame the hot, humid, New Jersey weather, I guess, but also that, since my partner finally came out as an occasional beer drinker, I’ve been picking up the odd six-pack to keep in the fridge – Allagash,...
by Matthew Friedman | Apr 19, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Essays
By refusing to even countenance the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States from a Salvadorian concentration camp, the Trump regime is testing norms and boundaries; but more than that, it is signaling how it expects to shape the future, and the White...
by Matthew Friedman | Mar 28, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Commentary
“Getting the Hell out of here” is on my mind these days. I live in a deep-blue part of New Jersey, no more than a couple of miles from one of those liberal universities that give Redhats hives. But if I go just a mile further out in either direction, I...
by Matthew Friedman | Mar 21, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Commentary
I could never have imagined that I would find myself “behind the lines.” The phrase was always a feature of the kind of military adventures that I consumed as a boy; the First World War ace forced down behind the German Trenches, Jan Kubis in Alan...