The Eights | American Culture Wars 1948 - 1978

On this 150th Memorial Day, catch up with the series "The Eights" as The Brian Lehrer Show, in conjunction with The Harris Poll, is serving up a history of the American Culture Wars in our lifetimes, as seen through years that end with the number 8.   

• 1948: Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America, foreign policy analyst, international lawyer and political scientist, discusses events that took place in 1948 that lead to the rise in globalism, including the formation of NATO, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Marshall Plan;
• 1958: Mary Frances Berry, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the author of History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times (Beacon Press, 2018), looks back on race and the first year of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission;
• 1968: Cokie Roberts, NPR commentator and the author of Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation (Harper Perennial, Reprint 2009), and Elizabeth Drew, the journalist, contributing editor to The New Republic and the author of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall (The Overlook Press, 2014), discuss the 1968 presidential primaries by looking at Nixon's opponents, and how Richard Nixon won the election with his brand of populism
• 1978: Gail Collins, New York Times op-ed columnist and the author of When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (Little, Brown and Company, 2014), looks at the rise of second-wave feminism circa 1978.

We've picked one episode from each week of the series, so far.  Tune in for 1988, starting tomorrow.

Links to the original unedited audio found here:

• 1948 and the Rise of Globalism (May 7, 2018)
  

• 1958 and The Civil Rights Commission (May 11, 2018)

• 1968 Presidential Primaries and Nixon's Brand of Populism (May 17, 2018)

• 1978 and the Rise of Modern Feminism (May 21, 2018)