Why can't we think straight about the big issues that face our society? Why are we taken in by the phony arguments of populists and scammers? Where are the philosophers hiding when we need them to tell us what makes sense? They are hiding because they have nothing to say. The airy-fairy answers offered by writers of footnotes to Plato were wrong two thousand years ago, and they are still wrong now. All this time, we should have been listening...