SOURCE: Frohnen, Bruce. “Has Conservatism Lost Its Mind?: The Half-Remembered Legacy of Russell Kirk.” Policy Review, no. 67 (winter 1994): 62-66.

In the following essay, Frohnen reexamines what Kirk meant by “conservatism” and applies his conclusion to the economic policies and events of the 1990s, especially as they were affected by the “conservatives” of the post-Reagan era.

It's been 40 years and seven editions since the first publication of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind. As one observer recently put it, Mr. Kirk “is like ol' man river: he just keeps rollin' along.” And so does his work. The Conservative Mind still is widely considered the single most influential book for modern conservatism. But are the leading ideas and policy proposals of today's conservative movement truly conservative in the sense in which Mr. Kirk used the term? The answer is both yes and no.

This question is difficult to address because Mr...