Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox
190 POSTS490 COMMENTS
https://inmedias.blogspot.com/
Russell Arben Fox grew up milking cows and baling 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

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...

Should You Move?

Charles Mahron has opened up what I think to be a great, even essential, discussion that fans of localism and sustainability and community of...

What Do Farmers Want?

The obvious response to the title of this post is: I don't know; why don't you ask one? Well, Robert Wuthnow and his researchers...

Naftzger Park, Planning, and the Problem of “Growth”

Naftzger Memorial Park was a small, pleasantly run-down city block of trees, grass, and benches, near the center of downtown Wichita, KS, just a...

The Reinvention of (a More Localized) America

New in The Atlantic is a long--probably a little too long, but stick with the whole thing; it's worth it--article by journalist James Fallows,...

What Wendell Berry’s Brush Teaches Us About Capitalism, Community, and “Inevitability”

The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, the latest collection of writings by Wendell Berry, isn't a perfect book, nor the perfect expression...

From 1948, to 1968, to 2018 (and Beyond?)

A long, thoughtful, well-researched, and theoretically serious piece of historical reflection has just appeared in The Atlantic, one which examines the fate of liberalism...

An Invitation to Caleb’s Porch

Those of us who have been around Front Porch republican for a while will remember the trenchant, funny and (in my opinion) only occasionally...

Learning from The Left Behind

Robert Wuthnow's new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is the best book I've read on the rural-urban divide in...

Good News and Bad News

As always, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. On the good side of the ledger, the facts seem incontrovertible: more and more people...

Prairie Fires and Prairie Romances

Caroline Fraser's wonderful Prairie Fires is many things. Primarily it's a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the justly famous Little House books,...