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Protectionism worked pretty well for the first 120 years of the republic.

Yeah, right. Look at the spike in annual GDP growth right after WWII when we fully embraced free(r) trade.

Looks like history tells a different story from what the protectionists want us to believe.

It’s worked wonderfully for Japan, China, Germany, and Korea.

On what do you base this opinion, feelings? You need to get out more. Have you ever been to any of these countries? China has 400 million people living on the edge of starvation. I've lived in Japan and I can assure you that I wouldn't trade our economy, and lifestyle, for theirs in any way. Korea? You have to be kidding. Ask a German which system is better, and if they are honest, you will find that our way is far superior. I've found that people who have little real experience with the world are always the first to sing the praises of the way others do things.

If you’re going to blindly follow the will of the free market...

Blindly following the will? Have you ever taken (and passed) a course in economics? If you don't trust markets, then you are a proponent of the command economy. Are you also a fan of five-year planning? If you trash markets, which are based on free people freely making decisions that benefit themselves, then you have no right to be calling yourself a conservative. You are at the opposite end of the freedom spectrum.

you may want to consider that there are markets for murder for hire, markets for abortions, and markets for prostitution.

Good thing we have a Constitution and the rule of law in this country. Are you one of the illiterates who thinks Mogadishu represents a truly free market? You should think more before posting such nonsense.

we should probably keep the government out of those markets, right?

The stupid, it burns.

Yes, WW2 the war we won by have 10 times the industry of anyone else built up in 120 years of protectionism. All gone in just 40 years of full free trade. We'd lose ww2 today because China has all our industrial capacity to mass produce war material.

And sure, so called free trade was pretty good for us for a while. From WW2 to the 70s our government used protectionism to make sure the US didn't run a trade imbalance. Since our trade imbalance went negative our industry has fled and we've headed down the road to 3ed world crap hole, just like the UK before us.

I've read plenty of economic text books and most are 90% lies. Economics is full of nice sounding ideas and very few facts. Studying the actual process of how nations rise and fall serves me much better than reading lies and false predictions written by academicians who've never had to apply their work to the real world.

If you want to learn the truth go read the amazing rise of so many nations in recent years and their heavily protectionist policies.