History usually defies measurement and exactitude and a unifying theme or “organizing principle,” and hence it is difficult to define “the biggest themes” in my course. I want to bring into the historical consciousness of my students men and women ordinarily left outside the framework of the American experience, mostly “ordinary” working-class people who did not leave behind the kinds of journals, records, and correspondence historians rely upon but who nevertheless found ways to communicate their experiences and ideas. I want my students to consider in a historical context the idea that social inequities are neither inevitable nor accidental but reflect the assumptions, beliefs, and policies of certain people who command enormous power; that there are limits to our power as a nation, that no country is exempt from history; that the indispensable strength of America remains the right of dissent, and that few people have cared more deeply about this nation than some of its severest critics; and that we need to be wary of those who in the name of protecting our freedoms would diminish them. History teaches, after all, that it is not the rebels, the iconoclasts, the curious, the dissidents who endanger a democratic society but rather the accepting, the unthinking, the unquestioning, the docile, the obedient, the silent, and the indifferent.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
The importance of dissent is a good lesson for Western societies, which builds on the American tradition.
I would, however, also like it to be taught that the pursuit of what is right is far superior to the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness short-circuits meaning, dignity and purpose. It supplies a justification for people to give in to the meanest narcissistic urges without concern for others or for tomorrow. So, I would like people to learn that a better route to all these things is the pursuit of what is right for its own sake.
Abbie Hoffman: “All you need is not love. All you need is justice.”
Having spent the morning reading that Narcissistic stuff from Herr Sam, it strikes me that, for the most part, normative social conditioning in the Western world has an abusive component, because children are not taught to seek for what is right, but are taught instead to seek for their own immediate gratification (a recipe for becoming narcissistic self abusers with an empty sense of their own organic self and need to supplement this sense of lack by gaining the attention of others).
It it NOT abusive to seek to instil in children a set of moral norms which enable them to aspire towards a more perfect society (yet this has been perceived as indoctrination and therefore as abusive per se.) Actually, this capacity to idealise beyond oneself is often a form of salvation in times of dire circumstances. [On the latter point, this is the basis for a profound misunderstanding between myself and one of my Secular Party colleagues.]
Here is another insight into how an abusive society decreased empathy.
Oops, maybe: HERE
The second link (in the comment just before this one) works.