Place. Limits. Liberty.
Join us for FPR’s 2025 Conference on “Work and Leisure”

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

Conservatism, Localism, and the Mittelpolitan Problem

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] This morning, I completed a series of lectures and discussions with a local civic group here in Wichita. The topic for this morning was the…
October 30, 2014

City Liberty, Country Liberty

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] It's clear to me that one of the primary things people (in the United States, certainly, but also elsewhere) think about when trying to understand…
October 3, 2014

Seeing Our (Non-Cosmopolitan) Selves

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Some years ago, some of the folks behind F5, an alternative weekly newspaper here in Wichita, started a different (and, as it turned out, short-lived)…
September 29, 2014

What Would the Father of Nationalism Say About Scottish Independence?

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] On Thursday, voters in Scotland will go to the polls and either choose "Yes," meaning that they want Scotland to become an independent state, or…
September 16, 2014

Libertarianism, Paternalism, and Pot

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] From 2003 to 2005, we lived in Craighead County, Arkansas, while I taught at Arkansas State University. Craighead was a dry county, having voted many…
August 14, 2014

Happy Birthday, Mr. Berry

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Today, Wendell Berry turns 80. There is much which could and perhaps should be said in honor of him on the occasion of his birthday,…
August 5, 2014

Trust, Community Ties, and Letting Your Children Play

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The story has exploded all over the internet : Debra Harrell, a Georgia woman, dropped her 9-year-old child off at a park–not an isolated and…
July 16, 2014

How Marx Explains the Pomo-Con/Front-Porch Divide, In Four Easy Steps

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Via Rod Dreher, I see that the occasionally interesting blog Postmodern Conservative has departed its longtime home at the (often, if not always) theoconservative journal…
June 4, 2014

Public Schools, Local Schools, Family Schools

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Yesterday was the final day of the school year at Peterson Elementary School, the public school which three of our four daughters have attended. It…
May 23, 2014

Half Edward Abbey, Half George Grant, All Natural

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Farley Mowat has died. Long before I knew anything about alternatives to the late-20th-century American way of life, long before I considered myself an environmentalist…

(Civic) Myths over (Religious) Markets: Defending the National Day of Prayer

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] I don't often disagree with my old friend Michael Austin, partly because he's much smarter and much better read than I, and partly because he's…

The Meritocracy Reaches Kindergarten

My title isn't saying anything new, unfortunately; highly competitive private kindergartens and pre-k programs have long since dotted the wealthier (and more paranoid) corners of the United States, as well…
April 26, 2014