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Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox is a Front Porch Republic Contributing Editor. He 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.”

Articles by Russell Arben Fox

Huzzah for the Montana Supreme Court!

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…
January 3, 2012

Occupy Food! (And Other Simple Things)

[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…
December 23, 2011

George F. Will and the Decline of the Tory

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS I don't know how many people in the conservative public sphere read George F. Will closely any longer--maybe lots of them do, but…
October 12, 2011

Global Warming, Local Farming, and Naomi Klein: A Trip to the Land Institute

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS A couple of weeks ago some fine intellectuals, political figures, journalists, and activists associated with this blog gathered together to talk about localism,…
October 6, 2011

Everyone Needs a Little Localism (or Leroy) in Their Lives

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS (This is, in many ways, connected to yesterday's post on Shannon Hayes's Radical Homemakers, but it also stands very much on its own.)…
June 23, 2011

Waking Up, Smelling the Constitutional Coffee

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Dahlia Lithwick and Ezra Klein are a couple of my favorite pundits in the whole blogosphere. Lithwick is snarky, and Klein is wonky,…
May 17, 2011

Simplicity “Bleg”

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] I'd like to call upon the collective wisdom of the Front Porch Republic, to help me with a new class I'll be teaching in the…
May 12, 2011

He Deserved It

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS That's a terribly unChristian thing to say, I know. To speak in moral terms--to speak of "desert"--in matters of war is to invariably…

Bradley Manning, and my Biggest Disappointment in Obama (Yet)

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Let me make two things clear: first, all things considered, I still think Barack Obama has been, and remains, a pretty decent president--certainly…
March 14, 2011

Theses on Unions, Wisconsin, and Other Things

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS So last night, the Republicans in the Wisconsin state senate passed the bill which Governor Scott Walker has made the cornerstone of his…
March 10, 2011

Alito Gets it Right about Free Speech

As I predicted last October, the Supreme Court has made short work of the argument that the odious, bigoted, hateful, ridiculous Westboro Baptist Church ought to be subject to lawsuits…
March 3, 2011

A (Compromised) Localist Looks at Wisconsin

The demonstrations in support of union power in Wisconsin ought to speak powerfully to all localists, despite the complicated baggage they bring with them.
February 25, 2011