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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

Localist Principles, Populist Words (or, The Problem Defined)

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] I suppose Front Porch Republic is experiencing growing pains, because all the talk lately is about "what's next?"--what cause, what platform, what principles or agenda…
November 23, 2009

Ah, Let the Courts Do it

In the continuing argument over what should or shouldn't be the responsibility of the government--and what government, whether local or state or national, should be responsible for it--there is, I…
November 9, 2009

Who Was the Real Winner in the New York 23rd Race?

There were several. But this biggest, I think, was: The American party process....The New York state GOP by-passed the primary process, and got slammed for it. A third party candidate…
October 28, 2009

Defending (Local) Prohibition(s)

Jacob Weisberg, in Slate, says that the spirit of Prohibition is dead, and those laws which still maintain elements of that spirit--stopping gay people from marrying, stopping sick people from…
October 27, 2009

Sharing the Kids Equally

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS So, Melissa has flown the coop, escaping to Washington D.C. for the next four days to hang out with friends old and new,…
October 15, 2009

Update to Sharing the Children Equally

One of America's more interesting and less predictable feminist public intellectual voices, Arlie Hochschild, has a few things to say about the general topic of family life and child care…
October 15, 2009

Defending Lasch, Left and/or Right

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS. No one, I think, has ever summed up the longing for a life with front porches--the localist longing which is this blog's raison…
October 8, 2009

So What if it was the States that Centralized Health Care?

Adding to the many discussions thus far here at FPR about the ongoing health care debate, an open question, especially directed to Messrs Stegall, Medaille, and Iliff: How should a…
September 26, 2009

Canaries in a Coal Mine? (APSA Reflections)

Wichita, KS I just returned from my near-annual pilgrimage to the American Political Science Association's annual convention...this year held, ironically enough, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I didn't mind--it meant I'd…
September 1, 2009

Can Health Care Be Local?

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Over the past couple of weeks, I've written a few things on the current debate over health care reform. A couple of smart…
August 6, 2009

Lessons from a Motorcycle Mechanic

Wichita, KS [Cross-posted at In Medias Res] Let's pause a moment and be grateful that the job market for political theorists is so bad. Because if it wasn't, Matthew Crawford,…
July 17, 2009

Monty Python’s Shop Class

As so often seems to be the case, the Monty Python troop somehow managed to make Matthew Crawford's point about the enduring value of working with your hands decades before…
July 12, 2009