Star Wars Discussion at Watchdog.org
Religion & Liberty Online

Star Wars Discussion at Watchdog.org

Happy Star Wars day!

The new Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens, opened across the US and worldwide today, and I can’t tell you anything about how well it’s doing. I’ve been avoiding Googling it because I’m a huge nerd and I don’t want to accidentally uncover any spoilers. (I haven’t seen it yet.) But I do know that the presales were over $100 million. So even if people end up hating it, it’s already done pretty well.

(Not that kind of spoiler.)

Eric Boehm, who is the national regulatory reporter for Watchdog.org and who I had the pleasure to meet at a conference last April, read my post this past Monday on Lando Calrissian as a Star Wars entrepreneur, and asked me to join him for a Star Wars-themed discussion of freedom and virtue for their regular podcast.

The podcast is up today. My interview comes up in the second half, but the whole show is worth your time. You can find it here.

And — okay, okay, I’ll say it — may the force be with you.

Dylan Pahman

Dylan Pahman, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Acton Institute and founder and president of the St. Nicholas Cabasilas Institute. He is author of The Kingdom of God and the Common Good: Orthodox Social Thought (Ancient Faith, 2025) and Foundations of a Free Society & Virtuous Society (Acton, 2017). With John Pinheiro, he is also coeditor of The Christian Roots of American Liberty (Acton, forthcoming in 2026), a sourcebook charting the prehistory of American founding principles through the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds.