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Matt Walsh’s new installment in his Real History series is a welcome corrective to the academy’s endless project of national self-flagellation. He pushes back against the lazy narrative that reduces our founders and frontiersmen to one-dimensional villains, arguing that figures like Daniel Boone deserve to be remembered for the courage and toughness that built this country.
Daniel Boone was not a cartoon — he was a woodsman, soldier, and trail-blazer whose life helped open Kentucky to settlement and set the pattern of American expansion. The record shows Boone explored Kentucky, blazed the Wilderness Road, and helped found Boonesborough in the 1770s; these facts matter because they explain why generations of Americans looked to him as an example of rugged independence.
Across the country there are signs that the story of Boone is still being fought over: while some bureaucrats and artists depict complicated frontier encounters, others are trying to erase or neglect the tangible markers of our past. Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources recently unveiled historical artwork in Greene County showing Chief Blackfish and Daniel Boone together, a reminder that truth is complex and that history should educate rather than shame.
At the same time, local efforts to preserve Boone’s memory face strange contradictions — from valuable highway markers going missing to debates over how we treat the lands that bear his name. Historical trusts in Tennessee have reported that irreplaceable Daniel Boone markers have vanished and communities are scrambling to replace them, which suggests cultural amnesia is often less about truth and more about neglect or opportunism.
Even policy disputes over the Daniel Boone National Forest reveal the same conflict of priorities: conservation rhetoric is being used by some to block sensible management while others argue for stewardship that balances preservation, public access, and local economies. The controversy over a 2025 federal directive and timber projects in the Daniel Boone National Forest shows environmental groups and courts fighting over how to manage public lands — an argument that should not let historical iconography be weaponized against the people who live and work near these forests.
What the debate about Daniel Boone really exposes is a wider cultural rot: an eagerness to tear down icons instead of teaching the full, complicated truth and celebrating the virtues that made America exceptional. Conservatives should insist on honest history that neither idolizes nor demonizes, that preserves monuments and markers while also telling the whole story — because a free people who know their past are the best defense against a future of manufactured guilt and national self-loathing.
