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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

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

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 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 ultimately…

The Wonderfully (if Perhaps Insufficiently) Radical Bill McKibben

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 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, everything this endlessly…

“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. It is, of course, implicitly a…
May 12, 2019

Bringing Wendell Berry (and Business) to Sterling

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A week ago I was able to organize a small group of friends to attend a fine, relatively intimate event at Sterling College, a small…

What Urban Liberals Might Learn From Rural Rebels

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Loka Ashwood, a rural sociologist at Auburn University, visited The Land Institute in Salina, KS, last September, and gave a presentation on her then just-published…

American Conservatism, and the Socialist Specter Which Haunts It Still

[Cross-posted to In Media Res] Back in February, Rod Dreher shared with his readers an idea for a new book: to introduce conservative Christians in America to "the warnings that…

Local Identity and Cities In-Between

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 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 50th-most…

Losing (Some of) the Local Commons

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 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 for…

What Kind of Democracy Do Localists Want?

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think of…
November 11, 2018

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 have been elected President of the…
August 19, 2018

Catastrophe, Technology, Limits, and Localism

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 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 bulk…

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 every possible stripe ought to have:…
July 9, 2018