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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

The Place (and Place-ness) of Occupy, Ten Years On

Holding up a sign, sitting at a lunch counter, sticking a flower in a gun, setting up a tent, and occupying a space in the face state and corporate power…
December 24, 2021

Taking (Democratic) Control of One’s Own Traffic

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS. That Charles Marohn is a friend to localist movements across the United States and beyond is indisputable. It’s not just that he has…

Everything for Everyone book discussion–the final evening!

Long-time friend of Front Porch Republic, Solidarity Hall's Elias Crim, is opening up the final session of their weekly small-group Zoom discussion of the Nathan Schneider's history of the cooperative…
June 29, 2021

Regarding Mutualism, Cooperativism, and Other (Interstitially) Anti-Capitalist Alternatives

Popular discourse in the United States today—as well as in many places around the world—hasn’t been so open to alternatives to the liberal capitalist mainstream for close to a century.

Teaching (or Cultivating) Sustainability (or Inhabitance), Ten Years On

As utopian as "religious education" and "local food tours" may seem, that doesn't mean we can't approach them with a hope for real formation work in mind.

Grace Olmstead’s Uprooted Idaho, and My Own

Uprooted is partly a memoir of her extended family, partly a paean to a way of life that is both dying and which she never really understood while she grew…

Some Possibly Helpful Thoughts on Localism, Populism, and Proximity During a Pandemic

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The departure of Donald Trump from the White House [crosses fingers] will assuredly not mean the departure of Trumpism from American life. The collection of…

Why The Cult of Smart is a Book for Every Parent in 2020 (Whether Anarcho-Socialist or Not)

The Cult of Smart is deeply entrenched in most modern systems of public education around the world, and the increasingly clear reality of cognitive and genetic differences between different human…

On the Difficulty of Civic Friendship and Unity in an Angry Time

With the hope that the self-promotion involved doesn't obviate whatever potential value the words written may convey, here is something I wrote, which I'd like to believe will be of…
November 29, 2020

The Anti-Federalists Were Right About Trump (and Many Other Things as Well)

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Gillian Brockell, a talented writer and researcher for The Washington Post's history blog Retropolis, interviewed four esteemed historians and scholars of the Constitution, about what,…
November 21, 2020

Left (not Liberal) Conservatism (or Communitarianism, if you Prefer): A Restatement

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Recently, Tablet Magazine published a lengthy essay by Eric Kaufmann, heralding the revival of "left-conservative" thinking, which the author defined as "a conservative view on…

Justice Caleb Stegall, Localist and Classical Liberal (Sometimes)

Caleb Stegall was one of the early guiding lights of Front Porch Republic, and his influence on the project, however distant, still endures. I've enjoyed, and learned much from, my…
June 10, 2020