I also don't get McLemee's point when he says: "Why is it that young conservatives tend to know who Russell Kirk was, and what Hayek thought, and how Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964 prepared the way for Reagan's victory in 1980?" It's because conservatives practice ancestor worship. That's nothing to emulate. The left isn't going to get anywhere staring in a rear view mirror.
Carl
^^^^ CB: On the other hand, I wouldn't be on the left at all, if I didn't retain inspiration from Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa L., WEB Dubois, Paul Robeson, Coleman Young, Herbert Aptheker, Chris Hani, Fidel Castro (vive !), ML King, Malcolm X, et al.
When I drive a car, I look in the rear view mirrors and through the windshield , both; past is prologue.