Polls indicate that the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, is leading the field in the first round with about 25 percent of the vote. ; his campaign book is titled “Revolution.”“Macron is, in some sense, the handsome brother of Marine Le Pen,” says Columbia University scholar Mark Lilla. All over Europe, the main political parties represent old cleavages between the church and secularism, capital and labor. Europe is not inexorably heading down a path of right-wing nationalism that abandons the European Union, economic integration, the Atlantic alliance and Western values. If the United States encourages the destruction of core Western institutions and ideals, then the West might well unravel.

Source: Washington Post February 24, 2017 00:33 UTC