By Patrick J. Buchanan – December 18, 2001

“John M. Culbertson, an economist known for mounting an articulate defense of protectionist economic policy long after the tenets of free trade were de rigueur among his colleagues, died on Sunday, in Madison, Wis. He was 80.”

So read Sunday’s obit in The New York Times, which went on to quote a Culbertson essay in 1986: “The future of the United States depends on whether we can escape from the childish dream world in which ‘free trade’ is The Good Fairy and ‘protectionism’ is The Wicked Witch of the West.”