[special-K]

I am American labor, so I have always been a buy American guy. But that doesn't mean I only buy American. I am also a buy quality guy and quality can be found all around the world. I'm ok with one country helping the other and vise-versa, as well. Countries around the world are known for certain products. Some things we never made here or never made as well. It's their product, not ours. I think of these things as what they made for themselves that I would like to have... beer, chocolate, watches, cookoo clock, Shetland wool sweater...

It's American products made overseas that I don't like. By American owners or foreign. I don't like our market so targeted to the point of taking it over. I watched Americans sell us out by jumping feet first for each foreign made product passed before them giving nary a thought to what that was doing to the state of our nation. And usually to only save a little. All I know is I didn't and I never had a hard time affording what I needed.

I remember the "Buy American" bumper stickers, I guess, around 1970 give or take. That was pretty much about cars at that time. Am I right? That's how I saw it. Well, I was driving a '56 VW and liked American and imports. In the '50s and '60s it didn't seem imports were such a threat. They were another, usually lesser, option in a time when Americans were becoming 2-car families. They built what they built and we built what we built. They were different.

By the time the bumper stickers came out the import market was really coming on. Through the '70s and '80s, you know the story. I saw it and I resisted, looked at the bigger picture. A large sentiment got to be, American products inferior to Japanese... and Euro too I guess. American vehicles were forced to change direction more toward those designs/engineering (cough! fwd)<example. First it was add-on but became engineered-in better vehicles and people were stuck on foreign, not looking. I wanted to get bumper stickers made that said "Try American". People did eventually see and buy.