We are not supposed to know these heroes today. The truths about them is just too politically incorrect. Our boys and young men are just supposed to submissively sit in rows desks. This way they can be conditioned for lives spent in cubicles or on assembly lines. No, fret today's politically motivated academics, heroes such as these might give our young men bold ideas; all the big things these men did and even the mistakes they made are just too dangerous for growing minds to know. Instead, we must hollow out a few heroes into uninspiring caricatures and just leave the rest out of our modern books altogether, say the committees who write textbooks. If we protest, they argue that, as these heroes were often not perfect by today's standards, they must be purged.
Nonsense. Our boys and young men?indeed, even our men?need to know the truth about heroes like these. For this reason, here are twenty men who broke the mold. Taken together, their true stories are a treasure map leading us to all we can be.
