Conservativism - The Negation of Ideology

Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind was a landmark study of the various threads of conservative thought. Sadly, today's so-called conservatives get their marching orders from the media-entertainment complex rather than looking back to the first principles, or as Kirk called them, the "permanent things" of traditional conservatism. As a result, conservatism has been dumbed down to a few bullet points and divorced from the prudent, thoughtful legacy of men like Kirk.

This paragraph from the forward to the seventh edition of The Conservative Mind captures the essence of conservatism: