Rare John Steinbeck column probes strength of US democracy

NEW YORK (AP) — Debates over the future of democracy aren’t new. Decades ago, communists and suspected communists were being blacklisted. As a resident in Paris at the time, John Steinbeck found himself asked often about the headlines from his native country and whether its form of government was endangered. His response was a column for a French publication that has rarely been seen since, but now appears in the current issue of the literary quarterly The Strand Magazine. “All democracies have it,” he wrote of the hysteria of McCarthyism. “It cannot be wiped out because, by destroying it, democracy would destroy itself.”