The end of Europe? Why Greece's exit from the euro would have repercussions far beyond economics.

A Grexit would call Europe's great civilizational project into question

(Image credit: (Athanasios Gioumpasis/Demotix/Corbis))

You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case!... You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples... There is only one holistic system of systems... It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today... And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!Network (1976)

Four decades after Ned Beatty spoke those lines from Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning script, and 16 years after the largest economies in Europe chose to adopt a currency not under the control of any sovereign state, the limits of this natural order are being reached. It turns out not only that nations and peoples still exist, but that cold calculations about what constitutes good business can reinforce or recreate old geopolitical divisions.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.