Bill was our Socrates.

He lured us to his side, at first, by showing us that upsetting the conventional wisdom was, as Socrates said, “an activity not without its amusing side” and naturally appealing to the young.

Once he had our attention he taught us that we were in a deadly serious game. For then as now the Sophists were serious about seizing power, and then as now their way of doing so was to discredit the very notion of truth and make their power the only reality.

Jacques Maritain famously said that there were never more than three schools of philosophy:

The idealists who believe that getting the truth was easy. These are the conventional liberals, whom Bill gently mocked.

The nominalists, the Sophists, who deny truth altogether; these are the hard Left, the true enemy he rallied us against.

And finally the realists, who accept that the truth is out there but is fiercely difficult to lock down.

Bill’s most enduring achievement was to identify and shape conservatism as the political expression of philosophical realism in our time

And so simultaneously, he gave us a vision of the intellectual life well lived, and put us in the field against the great enemy of our time.

He did what Socrates dreamed of: made philosophers of citizens and citizens of philosophers.

I hero-worshipped him. I am not ashamed to say it, because I chose my hero well, and my life has never been the poorer for it.