But for the Norman Cousins influence on American education, it is unlikely that Obama ever could have been elected. Certainly many of the spaced out looking youth at Obama rallies would have found a better use of their time.
It has often been the Cousins influence that has tipped the scales in public education against the actual study of American History, in favor of the study of excuses for bad policy by the Left, & their efforts to "change" rather than affirm American values--calls for more "diversity" included. Anything that makes a people want to preserve their heritage, rather than embrace a new "World Order," has been deliberately underplayed, if not totally removed from the curriculum.
That, after all, was precisely the changes that Cousins called for--albeit in a more round-about way, than I have just stated it.