Steinbeck: Democracy by any name

Future Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck - "Of Mice and Men" and Grapes of Wrath" - wrote in a French publication in 1954 that the practice embodied by U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was “simply a new name for something that has existed from the moment when popular government emerged.” McCarthy's chasing of suspected communists and blacklisting hundreds of people "is the attempt to substitute government by men for government by law,” Steinbeck wrote in the Le Figaro literary magazine. The column had rarely been seen until it was reprinted this week in The Strand Magazine. “We have always had this latent thing. All democracies have it. It cannot be wiped out because, by destroying it, democracy would destroy itself.” (The AP 10/28/22) Rare John Steinbeck column probes strength of US democracy | AP News