Talk politics.

When reading various accounts of anti-Communist policy by American political insiders, an idea recurs again and again. The problem is invariably described as one of Soviet aggression. War on the Korean peninsula: Soviet aggression. Mosaddegh deposes the Shah: Soviet aggression. Batista falls to Castro: Soviet aggression. South Vietnam spirals into civil war: Soviet aggression. Brutal dictatorships in Latin America are threatened: Soviet aggression. India shuts down East Pakistan: Soviet aggression. Tribal conflict and religious fanaticism tear Afghanistan apart: Soviet aggression.

With all of this aggression, you would think that the Soviet Union was a capitalist empire. After all, capitalism depends on aggression for its continued existence. The termination of aggression spells doom to capital expansion. Instead of eating the young of other lands a collapsing capitalist economy is force to eat its own young.

Scholars of the Austrian stripe tend to look the other way when confronted with the historic aggressions of the capitalist system. As Marxists blame all of their mistakes on counter-revolutionaries, Libertarians blame the bad aspects of capitalism on socialist impurities such as human weakness. The system is strong and good, but the staffing is weak and vicious. The message seems to be that "pure" capitalism is as impossible as travel at the speed of light. The only reason to continue promoting the idea is so that weak capitalists will continue funding the Austrian school in order to make themselves feel better. The words "running dog lackey" come to mind for some strange reason.

When Managua and Havana supported rebel guerrillas attempting to overthrow the corrupt death squad dictatorship of El Salvador, which side did American capital take? I'll give you a hint: it was not the side opposed to death squads. Capital loves an investment climate that is conducive to a substantial return on investment. This makes any regime that promotes wage slavery a pro-capital regime. The horrors of organized labor, public education, and accessible health care are obstacles to a hefty return on investment. As such, they are considered "aggressions" against property, whereas death squads are considered friendly to property.

A more recent example of death squad activity emerged under the heavy boot of American occupation in Iraq. Bodies cropped up like mushrooms with drill holes in their knee caps. It is a good thing US forces were there to prevent a bloodbath. They kept it down to a bloodshower instead. Good show, troops! Capital is proud of you.

As a child my mother recounted what it was like to have the Klan visit the neighborhood and burn a cross. As a young adult, a Klan member asked me why I was so down on the Klan. Do you have any experience with a death squad in your neighborhood?

During their ill-fated attempt to revolt against the British Empire, Americans debated which slogans they would use to rally the rebel regiments. One faction favored the right of property. Wiser heads pointed out that few of the troops owned much property, so the more general "pursuit of happiness" wound up standing in for property. In a way, it became the code word for property in the minds of the mad mullah's of money.

Manhattan was the Mecca of Money long before the princess of Redneckistan attempted to establish a rule of exclusion for competing cults. Alexander Hamilton and his stock jobbing minions had been drawn to the place like moths to a flame. Compared to the pernicious witch burners of Massachusetts and the brutal slave drivers of Virginia, the industrious Dutch boys of New York took on an aura of virtue. The plunder of piracy could be purified in its hallowed harbor for the benefit of transatlantic plutocrats.

As the truly ignorant were recently scrambling to outdo one another on reasons for despotic exclusivity in the Mecca of Money, I happened on an interesting perspective of the exclusion of the infidel from the Mecca of Mohammad. Ludovico de Vartema had masqueraded as a convert to Islam during the sixteenth century in order to visit the place and report on it at a time when journalism was unheard of in Italy. He remarked that the exclusion of the infidel served to hide Muslim hypocrisies from outsiders. The opposite appears to be the case for the Rednecki princess. her hypocrisy has become all too apparent.

Have you made a pilgrimage to the Mecca of Money? If so, what are your impressions? If not, when do you expect to make the Hajj?