... we have to understand where we came from.

Indeed. But that parallel does not bode well for progressives or small-"l" liberals.

These kinds of events can be galvanizing. Especially when the folks who coalesce around the intense emotion of the inciting event are organized and disciplined. Occupy, Me Too and BLM all launched with intense interest (and BLM got a second and third act with the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd). But contrast those movements with the lasting change of the Civil Rights Movement. The progressive left's current infatuation with decentralization and leaderless movements crippled those efforts from the beginning, and ultimately they faded away.

Kirk's real talent wasn't in oratory or debate, but in organizing and building institutional capacities to make up for the erosion of the GOP's capabilities. If his successors in TPUSA have comparable skill, then this could be more like the watershed moments of the Civil Rights Movement than the recent damp squibs of collective protest.