Forget Marine Le Pen: The Very Idea of Europe Is Finished [Reason Podcast]

Summary: "We've known that when there isn't American leadership in Europe things go to hell pretty quickly and we get sucked into horrible wars whether or not we originally wanted to or not," says journalist James Kirchick, author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, could hardly be more relevant. In the wake of Brexit, renewed nativism across the continent, and Putin's Russia grumbling to the East, Kirchick's thesis may well be tested in the coming years. In a wide-ranging and at-times combative conversation with Nick Gillespie, the 33-year-old Kirchick talks about why he Enlightenment values of liberalism, free enterprise, and pluralism have come under attack in the very part of the world that created them and why it's in the United States' best interest to help maintain a politically stable and economically productive European Union. He also discusses how he came to write his bombshell 2008 New Republic story bringing to light former Rep. Ron Paul's controversial and racially charged newsletters, the changing meaning of Jewish identity in post-war America, and how the failure of the Iraq War affected his views on foreign policy.