When Republican vice presidential candidate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), addressed the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, he said "America is not just an idea." Many took that as a defense of a nationalism rooted more in the land and in identity.

On Today's Show: Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox and the author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World (PublicAffairs, 2024), explores the resistance to democratic ideals that has always accompanied progress toward greater freedom and how that reactionary movement is active here and around the world.