Russell Arben Fox

The Problem of Undertheorized Agrarianism in Most Actually Argued Localism

April 25, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
That’s a terrible title for this post, I know. But hopefully it’ll make sense, if you actually make it to the end.
First of all, if any reader of this blog has missed out on…

Read the full article →

Fresh Water (Now at a Special Discount Price)!

April 22, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
Well, this is rather fascinating: here we have a video of the Austrian businessman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, who from 1997 until 2008 was CEO of Nestlé Group, one of the largest and most profitable corporations on…

Read the full article →

Mark Mitchell’s Politics of Gratitude (Theoretical and Otherwise)

tree April 18, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
To continue with the excellent discussion begun by R.J. Snell, Mark Mitchell’s fine and thoughtful book is filled with important insights and challenges, which do not, in my judgment, quite achieve what the author lays…

Read the full article →

Some Big Capitalists Do It Right

April 8, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
From what I can tell, most businesses, once they get to a certain size, cannot avoid be lured into the American conviction that you must expand or die. And, of course, the primary ways to…

Read the full article →

Ruthie Leming’s (and Rod Dreher’s) Little Way

51zyOb2vuoL._SS500_ April 8, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
Rod Dreher’s 2006 manifesto, Crunchy Cons…, was an inspiration (and provocation) to many, on both the left and the right. It wasn’t that the book was a tremendous intellectual break-through or an entirely new

Read the full article →

Something About Which Leftists, Localists, and Libertarians (But Probably Not Philosophical Liberals) Ought to Agree

March 7, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
Senator Rand Paul’s filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be head of the CIA–something that he did in order to “draw attention to deep concern on both sides of the political aisle about…

Read the full article →

Glenn Beck Gives Utopia a Bad Name

January 15, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
So Glenn Beck has proposed his grandest scheme yet: the construction of separate planned community, literally built around (in terms of architecture and overall design) the idealization (and arguably the idol-ization) of what he understands…

Read the full article →

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and the Ground on Which Communities Are Built

January 7, 2013

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
The final sentence in Behind the Beautiful Forevers…–Katherine Boo’s wonderfully written, devastatingly detailed narrative of several fascinating, despairing stories that took place over the period of a couple of years in a Mumbai slum

Read the full article →

Conservative Wisdom from an Original Radical

hayden December 10, 2012

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
Last Friday, Tom Hayden, co-founder of the Students for a Democratic Society, principal author of 1962′s Port Huron Statement (or, if you Big Lebowski fans insist, the compromised second draft), Freedom Rider, anti-war activist, social…

Read the full article →

What Was High School For Anyway?

highschool June 12, 2012

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
Twenty-five years ago today (I think; my memory is far from perfect) I graduated from Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley (then “Veradale”), WA. Herewith some thoughts on this momentous occasion from my past.…

Read the full article →

Creative Destruction and its Benefits, China-Style

factory_girls June 5, 2012

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
A few weeks ago I was visited by a fellow Wichita resident who was thinking about getting into politics. We talked for a while about his education and background, about the situation here in Kansas,…

Read the full article →

Getting the Garden Going, One Baby-Step at a Time

friendsgarden May 8, 2012

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
This academic year Friends University found itself wondering what to do with a plot of land, directly beside and behind some student dormitories. Through a fortuitous combination of variables (the discovery of some left-over money…

Read the full article →

Wes Jackson, Localism, and the Carbon-Based Community

IMG_1335 March 8, 2012

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
A couple of days ago, I had the lucky opportunity to listen up close to Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute here in Kansas, give a lecture at Newman University (just across the road…

Read the full article →

Saul Alinsky, Localist

January 26, 2012

Well no, not exactly. But as anyone who has ACTUALLY READ ALINSKY KNOWS–in contrast to those who simply parrot his name as part of rather stretched smear of anyone they which to paint as dangerous un-American radical–Alinsky was primarily about…

Read the full article →

Huzzah for the Montana Supreme Court!

montana January 3, 2012

This is the kind of states’ rights I like:
Montana’s Supreme Court has issued a stunning rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 that infamously decreed corporations had constitutional rights to directly spend money on ‘independent…

Read the full article →

Occupy Food! (And Other Simple Things)

leroy2 December 23, 2011

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
As Christmas and the end of 2011 approaches, I find myself thinking gratefully about what Leroy Hershberger has enabled my students and me to learn this year, and what that learning has meant to me.…

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries