Years ago — I think it was the early 2000s — a friend of mine in Philadelphia told me about a friend and neighbor of hers. “She’s an art-history professor at Penn, and she’s a conservative who reads NR.” “No way,” I said. “Yes way,” said my friend. “Absurd,” I said. “You’ve described something more unlikely than a unicorn.” “Well,” said my friend, “she exists.”

I could not believe there was such a specimen in the world. And it got better.

Said my friend, “She admires Donald Rumsfeld. And she has a cap that says ‘Rumsfeld Fan.’ She wore it while jogging — and someone spat on her.”

I had to meet this extraordinary woman: this art-history professor at Penn who read NR and admired Rumsfeld. Besides which, if she wore a “Rumsfeld Fan” hat, while jogging, in that environment, didn’t she have to be like the bravest person on earth? Or top ten?

I did indeed meet the jogger — the art historian, the braveheart — and she became a friend of mine: Professor Victoria Coates. Who later worked for Rumsfeld. And then Rick Perry. And now Ted Cruz, whose national-security adviser she is.

In a recent NR, I had a profile of her. That piece is on the homepage today: here. She is brainy, talented, versatile — and obviously gutsy as hell.

P.S. I think of a story told by Norman Podhoretz. He once said to Bukovsky, “Joseph Brodsky stood up to the Kremlin and the KGB. Why can’t he stand up to Susan Sontag and The New York Review of Books?” Bukovsky said, “You have to understand: It’s much easier to stand up to the KGB. Everyone around you — everyone you admire, everyone whose approval you want — hates the KGB. The New York Review of Books is a different story.”

A deep truth, if a disturbing one. Victoria Coates is her own woman, going her own way. These people are scarcer than hen’s teeth. And they remind the rest of us: “Nerve up.”