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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we launch a Brian Lehrer Show series called The Eights: Brief History of the American Culture Wars decade by decade. How did we become the polarized nation that we are today? In this series in conjunction with the Harris Poll, we will attempt to answer that question as seen through years that end with the number eight.

Come along for a series of conversations in which historians, participants, and definitely you on the phones, recall how Americans saw ourselves, each other, and this country's place in the world in 1948, 1958, '68, '78, '88, '98 and 2008 and, of course, leading up to today, 2018. We'll have historical audio too. We'll play some in just a second, all this to prepare us for going back out again for a 2018 Brian Lehrer Show Harris Poll that will ask what can really make America great and greatly unified in the decade to come. We're calling it "The Eights" because this year there are round-number anniversaries, obviously, of some really benchmark events in modern history. So much happened in 1968, that all the media are already talking about, and we'll get to some of that next week when we get to '68 in this series, but it made us think a lot happened in the other year since World War II, that ended in 8, 1998. The impeachment of Bill Clinton, with obvious culture war ramifications for today, and some echoes 2008. The election of Obama and the financial crisis, which has done so much to determine who we have been ever since.

Even 1958, supposedly a sleepy "Leave it to Beaver" time, at least for white America, contained some seeds that have grown into mighty culture war oak trees today. For our first three shows, today, tomorrow and Wednesday, we will set the way back machine for 1948. Today, the rise of liberal internationalism, tomorrow, the advent of the modern civil rights movement, and the immediate backlash. Wednesday, television signs-on yes, that happened in 1948.

Throughout the series, we will take calls from those of you who remember the years that we will flashback to. For our very oldest listeners right now, who out there at this moment has a memory of America special place in the world at the end of World War II and what it felt like to be an American in 1948, 212433-WNYC 2124339692. Today in foreign policy terms, what it meant to be an American in 1948. Tomorrow, we'll do more domestic terms, what it felt like to be an African American in 1948, and other kinds of Americans, domestically in 1948, but today about America and the world.

Let's dive in and see what we can learn from you and our guests. 212433-WNYC 4339692. In 1948, the Cold War was taking shape, and the nation of North Korea was founded in 1948. In 1948 there was no Nobel Peace Prize awarded because they wanted to give it to Gandhi, but he had just died. The rules prohibited posthumous Nobels. In 1948, the US was practically the only Western country standing after World War II.

We were trying to lead the way toward what is sometimes called liberal internationalism. That is global institutions like the UN and universal standards of government behavior to avoid the nationalist horrors of both World Wars and the genocides that went with them. Here is one minute of a 1948 newsreel called Germany, Handle with Care as the US was still in charge of land over there and dealing with daunting issues from rebuilding cities to policing the black market in cigarettes.

Male Speaker 2: Far more complex and delicate of task and coping with the black market is the job of denazification undertaken by the US military government. On trial or awaiting trial before special German courts are some 2 million indicted Nazis, penalties for the guilty ranged from long terms at hard labor for the worst offenders to fines for those less culpable. Though inevitably some have escaped just punishment the denazification courts have set aside from the German body politic great numbers of Hitler's followers and cleared the way for the democratic experiment the US Army is attempting under the direction of General Lucius D. Clay.

General Lucius D Clay: In our zone of Germany, we have moved consistently forward in establishing local government through electoral procedures. We believe that democracy can be established in Germany, but only if the German people again become interested in self-government through democratic processes.

Brian: How about that? That was a newsreel from 1948. If an element of today's Culture Wars in this country is a backlash against international institutions in 1948 in the rubble of the post-Cold War, they were seen as the key to a peaceful future as in the celebratory tone of our project over there in that newsreel. Here is non other than Winston Churchill from a speech in 1948 as an early promoter of a United States of Europe.

Winston Churchill: It is not a movement of bodies, but a movement of people. It must be all for all. Europe can only be united by the heartfelt wish and vehement expression of the great majority of all the peoples in all the parties in all the freedom-loving countries no matter where they dwell or how they vote. We cannot aim at anything less than the union of Europe as a whole, and we look forward with confidence to the day when that union will be achieved.

Brian: He does an even better Winston Churchill than Gary Oldman, doesn't he? Winston Churchill in 1948. In a sign of how that star has faded, here is today's British Foreign Minister, Boris Johnson, defending Brexit this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

Boris Johnson: We are coming out of the European Union. We are taking back control of our borders, our laws, our money. We want to be a great free-trading nation again. We want to do our own thing and run our own economic policy or have our own legislative program. What you've got to understand about the European Union, it involves trying to create a kind of federal organization out of 28 countries in a way that, I think, the United States would never accept.

We're talking now about the way the United States acts in the world, and you see some very, very strong and original decisions by the President, the stuff he's doing with Korea. Fascinating the way he's playing that.

Brian: Boris Johnson today. What a contrast. Back to 1948. The pro-globalist, anti-nationalist mood went even further than Churchill's unified Europe sentiments with a document adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article I, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in the spirit of brotherhood." Eleanore Roosevelt, by then the widow of FDR, endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with hope.

Eleanore Roosevelt: We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere.

Brian: Eleanore Roosevelt in 1948. The Universal Declaration included most of the language from the US Bill of Rights, but went even further, like in Article 23, "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests," and Article 24, "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay." How about that.

The world as represented by the UN adopted that in 1948, and here we still are with paid sick leave as an issue, never mind paid vacation leave. That would really be avant-garde as a matter of law. Coming up, we will hear a clip of Secretary of State George Marshall from 1948 as the US launched the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe. How many times have we heard people say these days that, "We need a Marshall Plan for this or for that, a Marshall Plan for the subways, for the schools, for affordable housing." We'll hear the original Marshall talk about the original Plan in moments. With me right now is Anne-Marie Slaughter. Among many other things, she has been director of the International Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, and Director of Policy Planning for the State Department under President Obama. She is currently an international lawyer and President and CEO of the think tank, New America. We are so honored that you're the first guest in our series, The Eights, welcome back to WNYC.

Anne-Marie Slaughter: Brian, yes, I'm so glad to be back on. I have to say I was born in 1958, so I happen to think this is a great idea.

[laughter]

Brian: Your parents obviously thought so too. Can I start with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? We just heard Eleanor Roosevelt. Is that a document you care about? Is it a document that the world ever cared about or implemented, or mostly some idealistic pros?

Anne-Marie: I think it's a hugely important document because it was drafted by a committee of people from different cultures and civilizations all around the world. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the committee, but it involved Islamic cultures, Asian cultures, all the great religions, all the great geographies. It was a recognition after World War I and World War II, that actually, if you did not focus on individual's rights, not just nation security but individual rights, war would come, that the seeds of war and conflict were lay with the way individuals were retreated, whether they had access to basic rights and freedoms.

Of course, as in all international law, it is often violated, but the world adopted a standard that we absolutely referred to, and in many ways has transformed US foreign policy.

Brian: The Cold War aside for the moment, that was obviously breaking out at that time. How much with the post-war era had been a time of new idealism in general in your experience in diplomacy in terms of what seeds grew into what by the time you got into government? It almost seems like after the horrors of the first half of the 20th century, the World Wars and the depression, idealism should have been crushed.

Anne-Marie: [chuckles] I think idealism was tempered, not crushed. The way to think about it is Franklin Roosevelt versus Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson, after World War I, really has this vision of the League of Nations where an attack on one nation is an attack on all, and everyone is going to come to everyone else's defense. That didn't make it through the US Congress and it didn't succeed. Franklin Roosevelt said, "No, no, that doesn't work, power matters." He had permanent members of the Security Council. He recognized you had to recognize-- The most powerful nations wanted a stronger say than others.

At the same time, Franklin Roosevelt was a very practical politician, but he understood that you had to have ideals. He believed in a world order that was founded on a vision of individual rights and economic security. I would say, people understood that you had to have a foreign policy and a world based on fundamental human values, but you also had to recognize the realities of power.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Asher in Woodmere, who remembers 1948. Asher, thank you so much for calling in.

Asher: Thank you very much. A moment you mentioned that Eleanor Roosevelt was pegged as a woolly-eye idealist by the association with Henry Wallace and liberalism and [unintelligible 00:14:09] so many other forces that try to delegitimize her idealism with the declaration.

In my personal cases, I was born in December 3rd, 1943, at the cusp of the Holocaust in Greece. I remembered the late '40s, including '48, the talk of '47 with Independence Missouri speech about a common Cold War in the Iron Curtain speech. I remember, as a youngster, the American Marshall Plan actualized in concrete terms with American cheese, which was spurred, not first by housewives, because they thought that it was more molded. That's why the American cheese got the name and that canned good was not to be trusted especially when they say that you could have it for months on the shelf. Do you remember that? Of course, the coming of NATO in the following year. In 1948, most important, the establishment of the state of Israel. The United States was the first to recognize it, and it's just a few months before. Unfortunately, the quintessential two states [unintelligible 00:15:35] what could have been had in the United Nations Resolution 181.

An Arab and an Israeli, Greece my home, native land, voted beyond christian and European country to vote against the establishment of a Jewish day. Here, 70 years later, we're still talking about to stay solution.

Brian: Asher, thank you so much for your call and your wonderful memories. Thank you so much. What a wonderful way to start this series at the caller level. A Holocaust survivor. Anne-Marie Slaughter, how much did the Holocaust inform the new international order? How much do you think we're living with that sins in international law which is a specialty, as opposed to the Nazis expansionist war-making across the borders? That is one country invading.

Another is one thing, but a Holocaust within a country's borders as another?

Anne-Marie: I think that is a very important piece of the understandings of 1948, which was that, when we look at Hitler in the '30s, people thought, "This is a matter of revenge after World War I. It's a matter between states." As we looked back, we realized that the way Hitler treated the Jews in 1933 and throughout the '30s and others in Germany was actually a sign of his fundamental ideology and brutality. In fact, security rested in assuring basic rights and freedoms for human beings within nations as well as across them.

That again can be called idealism, but people had learned the lessons that if you didn't pay attention to what was happening domestically, then those governments became strong and then attacked their neighbors. That is a big piece, I think, of creating the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Brian: As you mentioned, Asher mentioned, being a European in Greece and bombed out Europe and waiting for American cheese and canned goods and wondering if they were going to be safe to eat, but in the context, you said, of the Marshall Plan. 1948 was the year the Marshall Plan was adopted, more than $100 billion tax in today's dollars, $13 billion at the the time for the US to help rebuild Europe. Here is one minute of Secretary of State, George Marshall at the 1948 Congressional Hearing for the plan.

George Marshall: Why must the United States carry so great a load in helping Europe? The answer is simple. The United States is the only country in the world today which has the economic power and productivity to furnish the needed assistance. The six and eight-tenths billion proposed for the first 15 months is less than a single month's charge of the war. To be quite clear, this unprecedented endeavor of the new world to help the old is neither sure or easy. It is a calculated risk. It is a difficult program, and you know, far better than I do, the political difficulties involved in this program.

There's no doubt whatever in my mind that if we decide to do this thing, we can do it successfully, and there's also no doubt in my mind that the whole world hangs in the balance as to what it is to be.

Brian: Secretary of State, George Marshall, arguing for the Marshall Plan in 1948. Bob in Brooklyn remembers 1948. You're on WNYC. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Hi, Brian. First, thank you so much for the wonderful public service that you performed over many of these years. Thank you so much.

Brian: Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Bob: I remember as a naive 12-year old feeling very special being born and living in Brooklyn and a United States citizen when the United States felt like we sat at top of the whole world, but not in an aggressive, invincible play, in the most benign way possible, but we were there to save things, to make things right somehow. As a 12-year-old, America could do no wrong. We were in a position to do right, and the Marshall Plan certainly was a part of our ability to do that.

Brian: Bob, thank you very much. Anne-Marie Slaughter, what happened? We were on top of the world in 1948. Everybody looked to the United States. Nationalism was discredited. Here we are today in such a different state, and obviously we're going to be talking about various details of this in detail over the many weeks of this series, but what do you think with your experience in government looking at the arc of history?

 Anne-Marie: I think this is something that many Americans, certainly in my generation, all of us who grew up during the Cold War and for whom World War II and the Korean War and then Vietnam War were our touchstones. We often don't recognize this country in the world, and the part of that is just in an inevitable shift in power. Other nations rise, and partly other nations rise because we've wanted them to rise. We supported the Marshall Plan and European Integration. We believed that a strong and free Europe was in our interests.

We've supported China's integration into the world economy for the same reason and because it's good for the Chinese people. In the end, we want peace and prosperity for people around the world, but, at the same time, suddenly the United States is not being seen as the leader and the nation that must be at the table in diplomatic councils. That, for many of us, portends a much more chaotic world, not just because there are adversaries to our interests but because we're not there to stand up for universal values.

Brian: We're just about out of time, but, before you go, your other claim to fame, in recent years, is as a woman at the highest levels of professional life, who left a job because, I think, you said it was impossible raising two teenagers at the same time. You wrote about it publicly to try to force the next steps in the national conversation about that.

I referenced how in the universal declaration of human rights adopted in 1948, it included Article 24, that everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay almost seems to have some overtones, or so I will note that in 1948, Planned Parenthood awarded a small grant to start research into the birth control pill. That was 1948. Also in 1948, women were leaving the workforce as men returned from World War II. We will talk about this with other guests later in the series on the more domestic side of it. Do you ever wonder if that could have gone differently after the war?

 Anne-Marie: I do, in many ways, if we had built a different foundation on the rights of women who, that had been recognized, who made the American war effort possible, they went into the factories and onto the farms, but then were essentially sent back, these were mostly more privileged women, women who could afford to live on one income, and then from there, we've had to regain the same rights as men. You do look back and think, men and women were essential to our war effort. Men and women, both worked and raised children. We could have perhaps built differently on that foundation because, certainly, the country saw what women were capable of.

Brian: Anne Marie-Slaughter, president and CEO of New America and an international lawyer. Thank you so much for joining us.

Anne-Marie: Brian, it's been a pleasure.

Brian: Tomorrow, we continue our series, The Eights, a Brief History of the American Culture Wars decade by decade. We'll stay in 1948 tomorrow and move from today's international focus to a more domestic one tomorrow, including the dawn of the civil rights era and the backlash fell--

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