Commentary: 50 Years Later, ‘The Exorcist’ Continues to Possess Hollywood’s Imagination, Reflecting Our Obsession with Evil

The Exorcist

When the “The Exorcist” premiered 50 years ago, in December 1973, some theatergoers fainted or broke down in tears. A few even vomited.

The film, which cast a young Linda Blair as a girl claiming to be possessed by the devil, was an almost instant success, with moviegoers waiting in line for hours to secure tickets. It went on to gross over US$440 million worldwide.

Read the full story

Commentary: There’s a Four-Letter Word That Perfectly Describes the Modern Left

My friend Lawrence W. Reed is one of Earth’s biggest optimists. The legendary free-market scholar recalls flipping his vehicle at age 26 on an icy Michigan road in February 1980. As he rolled over inside his Ford Fairmont, he smiled: “Hey, I’ll get a new car out of this!”

Thus, his recent essay for the Foundation for Economic Education, of which he is president emeritus, is a surprise. Reed has gone from cheerful to chilly.

Read the full story

Commentary: Antifa Mobs Show How Idealism Can Lead to Evil

by Barry Brownstein   History is clear: When the ordinary restraints of civil society no longer apply, there is no forecasting who will be caught in the resulting web of hatred. The mob broke Carlson’s front door. A video captured one protester saying she wished she had a pipe bomb. Most consider Carlson a mainstream conservative commentator, but Antifa mobs see no room for any views other than their own. Although police arrived, they made no arrests while promising an investigation. “Tactically unwise” were the words Matthew Yglesias used to describe the protest. Yglesias, the co-founder of Vox, added, “I honestly cannot empathize with Tucker Carlson’s wife at all…I am utterly unable to identify with her plight on any level.” In other words, if you don’t agree with Yglesias, you get what you deserve when a vigilante mob arrives. CNN Host Justifies Mob Violence This past summer, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo provided a moral justification for mobs like the one outside Carlson’s home. “People who show up to fight against bigots are not to be judged the same as the bigots, even if they do resort to the same petty violence,” Cuomo said. He argued: “When someone comes to call…

Read the full story

Commentary: The Ideology of Evil

by Pedro Gonzalez   Michael Anton recently joined Tucker Carlson on Fox News to discuss an American Greatness column, “The Gillibrand Standard.” Anton argues that the Left poses a grave threat to our institutions, our country, and to decency and truth itself. Toward the end of the segment, Carlson asked, what does it say about those who claim that impartiality does not matter? “That power is everything,” Anton replied. Carlson concluded by remarking that the leftist drive for power for the sake of power is the product of a “secular worldview.” But I do not believe that one can understand the Left as simply secular. Indeed, one might say that the Left’s outlook is profoundly religious. Zealously so, in fact. Modern leftists could be said to be the illegitimate but filiated children of the Taborites, a faction of Radical Hussites, who destroyed churches under the military leadership of Jan Žižka in the early 1400s. They were also were also communistic, puritanical, and bent toward radical democracy and utopianism. But there is a far more sinister theology at play here. The first words uttered by Satan in book IV, line 110, of Paradise Lost are nonsensical on their face: “Evil be…

Read the full story