Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox
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https://mmfraf.webs.com/
Russell Arben Fox grew up milking cows and bailing hay in Spokane Valley, WA, but now lives in Wichita, KS, where he runs the History & Politics and the Honors programs at Friends University, a small Christian liberal arts college. He aspires to write a book about the theory and practice of democracy, community, and environmental sustainability in small to mid-sized cities, like the one he has made his and his family's home; his scribblings pertaining to that and related subjects are collected at the Substack "Wichita and the Mittelpolitan." He also blogs--irregularly and usually at too-great a length--more broadly about politics, philosophy, religion, socialism, bicycling, books, farming, pop music, and whatever else strikes his fancy, at "In Medias Res."

Recent Essays

The Localist Theory of Charles Marohn’s Wonderfully Practical Strong Towns

This past weekend, I took a group of students up to the annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute in Salina, KS. I...

Climate Change, Dirty Hands, and the Grace (and Hope) of Limits

Paul Schrader, the famed screenwriter and director, does not make subtle films. His latest movie, First Reformed--the story of a depressed, emotionally exhausted, and...

The Wonderfully (if Perhaps Insufficiently) Radical Bill McKibben

I've been a fan of Bill McKibben's writings for close to 30 years. That doesn't mean I've agreed with, or even enjoyed,...

“Who’s going to take care of these people?”

This is a sad and beautifully written portrait of a hospital in rural Oklahoma shutting down, perhaps to be re-opened, but probably for good....

Bringing Wendell Berry (and Business) to Sterling

A week ago I was able to organize a small group of friends to attend a fine, relatively intimate event at Sterling College, a...

What Urban Liberals Might Learn From Rural Rebels

Loka Ashwood, a rural sociologist at Auburn University, visited The Land Institute in Salina, KS, last September, and gave a presentation on her then...

American Conservatism, and the Socialist Specter Which Haunts It Still

Back in February, Rod Dreher shared with his readers an idea for a new book: to introduce conservative Christians in America to "the warnings...

Local Identity and Cities In-Between

2018 has been a busy year for those of us who aspire to--or are at least somewhat animated by--localism here in Wichita, KS, the...

Losing (Some of) the Local Commons

The annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute just outside Salina, KS, was held two months ago, but it's been much on my mind...

What Kind of Democracy Do Localists Want?

Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think...

Jimmy Carter, Front Porch Republican

Via The Washington Post, a profile of the quiet, deeply local, exceptionally frugal, profoundly humble life lived by the only actual small-c "conservative" to...

Catastrophe, Technology, Limits, and Localism

Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet, published earlier this year, is a fabulous book. Not a perfect book; sometimes, in order to...