Liberalism has no Intellectual Roots?

In a story about transmitting the intellectual roots of conservatism, Jason DeParle of the Times uncritically passes on this stinker:

Every political movement has its texts. But James W. Ceaser, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, argues that the conservative focus on core thinkers has no exact parallel among liberals.

"It doesn't mean they're not interested in ideas," Professor Ceaser said. "It means their approach to politics doesn't rest on theory in the same way."

Liberalism's main tenets formed earlier, he said, in the Progressives' expansion of government, and are conveyed as assumptions rather than matters requiring theoretical debate.

There's "no exact parallel" between liberals and the "conservative focus on core thinkers?" So all that time I spent reading John Rawls, John Locke, Adam Smith, Martha Nussbaum, the entire corpus of Greek thought and mainstream economists like Keynes was apparently sui generis, I suppose, in creating my worldview as a modern progressive. Conservatives may have their cute little summer boot camps, people, but we have college.