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.

Posts by Dylan Pahman

February 15, 2018

Riding the net neutrality see-saw

This week, I was one of several commenters consulted in Nicholas Wolfram Smith’s article “FCC Repeal of Net Neutrality Leads to Lively Fight” for the National Catholic Register. I think Smith did a fine job conveying my primary concern: But according to Dylan Pahman, a researcher and managing editor of Acton Institute’s Journal of Markets & Morality, one of the problems with the 2015 net neutrality regulations was that it gave the government far too much regulatory power over ISPs. Continue Reading...
October 09, 2017

Putting Columbus in context

A few years ago the following quote from Christopher Columbus started making the rounds: For one woman they give a hundred castellanos, as for a farm; and this sort of trading is very common, and there are already a great number of merchants who go in search of girls; there are at this moment some nine or ten on sale; they fetch a good price, let their age be what it will. Continue Reading...
September 27, 2017

Pope, Patriarch need theology of civilization

Today at Public Orthodoxy, I examine the recent claim of Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew that The human environment and the natural environment are deteriorating together, and this deterioration of the planet weighs upon the most vulnerable of its people. Continue Reading...
September 14, 2017

StarCraft as soulcraft: Lessons from a classic computer game

The video game developer Blizzard Entertainment, best-known today for its massively popular World of Warcraft (2004), first released a lesser-known classic in 1998: StarCraft. The science fiction warfare and strategy game was the best-selling PC game of the year, and it sold nearly 10 million copies over the next decade. Continue Reading...
September 13, 2017

The spiritual core of liberty

Last week FEE published an essay by economist Dierdre McCloskey titled “The Core of Liberty is Economic Liberty.” McCloskey writes, [E]conomic liberty is the liberty about which most ordinary people care. Continue Reading...
May 31, 2017

The Importance of Incompetence

  Today at Public Discourse, I argue that in addition to idealism and self-interest, incompetence needs to be recognized as a more important factor in politics: [U]nless we add incompetence as a category of analysis, we will tend to view every victory for our own team as a triumph of justice or freedom or equality (idealism), and every failure the result of deep and convoluted corruption (self-interest). Continue Reading...
April 17, 2017

Hades is a bad economist

  This Sunday Christians all over the world (East and West together this year!) celebrated Easter or Pascha, the feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the holiest day of the liturgical year, the beginning of a festive season that lasts for the next forty days. Continue Reading...
February 13, 2017

New Issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality (19.2)

The most recent issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 19, no. 2, has been published online and print copies are in the mail. This issue features the publication of Acton’s 2015 Novak Award winner Catherine Pakaluk’s lecture, “Dependence on God and Man: Toward a Catholic Constitution of Liberty,” in addition to our regular slate of peer-reviewed articles. Continue Reading...