In 1985, Roger [Milliken] had come to the White House to persuade me to convince the president to sign a bill to slow the flood of textiles into the country. No way, I told Mr. Milliken. I'm the biggest free-trader in the building, except for the fellow down the hall, who was Ronald Reagan. Roger went away disappointed. Reagan vetoed the bill. And I supervised the writing of the veto message.Note the implication that Reagan never "had seen the light."Within half a decade, however, some of us had seen the light and enlisted in Roger's crusade to preserve the manufacturing core of the country that he rightly saw as inextricably tied to the prosperity and the pre-eminence of the United States.
Patrick J. Buchanan, Requiem for a Patriot, January 4, 2010.
Then ask yourself if what we have today in any way resembles his stated vision