To understand the problem of natural right, one must start, not from the "scientific" understanding of political things but from their "natural" understanding, i.e., from the way in which they present themselves in political life, in action, when they are our business, when we have to make decisions. This does not mean that political life necessarily knows of natural right. Natural right had to be discovered, and there was political life prior to that discovery. It means merely that political life in all its forms necessarily points toward natural right as an inevitable problem. Awareness of this problem is not older than political science but coeval with it. Hence a political life that does not know of the idea of natural is necessarily unaware of the possibility of political science and, indeed, of the possibility of science as such, just as a political life that is aware of the the possibility of sicence necessarily knows natural right as a problem.

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History

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Jazz guitar resources

Submitted by Dheeraj Chand on Fri, 2010-01-29 17:32

Guitar
Music

Here are some jazz guitar resources that have come my way. I'm going to keep adding to this. Enjoy.

1. Herb Ellis Swing Blues Jazz Guitar Method

2. Wes Montgomery Style Method

3. Jody Fisher Vol. 1

4. Jody Fisher Vol. 2

5. Jody Fisher Vol 3.

6. Jody Fisher Vol. 4.

-dx

Dheeraj Chand's blog
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Why Is It Republicans Have No Talent?

Submitted by Dheeraj Chand on Wed, 2009-06-17 10:35

I am not one of those people for whom the political message of some artistic object X is enough to ensure that I will enjoy it. I have heard, seen and read enough awful stuff whose political messages I would otherwise find quite reasonable that was just so abominably made and executed that I couldn't bring myself to do anything with it, and I frequently try to forget it. This leads me to the question that is probably on everyone's mind: why is it that Republicans seemingly have no artistic talents? Oh, sure, I know that they have a blog dedicated to proving that it's a vast liberal conspiracy to keep Republicans from succeeding in culture, but if you take a stroll over there, you'll quickly find out that it's because the very cream of their crop are just hideously untalented - I mean, awful.

Listening to their jokes reminds of looking at conservative Christian bumper stickers from my beloved Texas: you have to be so deep in the know on their culture and in-jokes for any of the references to make sense that they look stupid to anyone else, or, more frequently, there's absolutely no subtlety or wit to what they're doing. Case in point:

Does anyone in the world who has more than three teeth find this funny? How about this one? "If you want to get to heaven, turn right and go straight."

Now, beneath the fold, you'll find some competing examples of Democratic and Republican pop music. I've chosen to look at hiphop and rock music, as they're probably the two easiest forms in which one can express political ideas. Guess which ones suck.

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