The first time I heard of modern supper clubs was from John Derbyshire. I don’t recall the specifics, just that he was a member of one in New York City. I want to say it was in one of his podcasts, but I don’t recall. That’s not important. I was surprised to learn such things were still going on. It seemed like a thing Victorians would do or perhaps rich people in the roaring twenties. When I think of supper clubs, the Jacobin Club is what comes to mind. Something clandestine and slightly heretical. I decided to see if any of these things existed in my part of the world and sure enough, they were around and not very secret about it. I just chalked it up to one of those things that was unknown to me but well known to most others. It is a big world, after all.

I saw this and immediately was reminded of it again. It turns out they are not legal and perhaps even subversive. Now the city intends to round up the miscreants and shut down their clubs. I suppose the next time we hear from John Derbyshire will be in the police blotter. It sounds absurd, but this is New York City. They want to regulate the amount of soda you can drink. They have been having the police hassle NAM males who are foolish enough to cross into Manhattan. This is not a place that thinks personal liberty and freedom of association have a place in their society. The mayor has been jetting around the country trying to get legislatures to strip citizens of their right to self-defense. What seems absurd today is conventional wisdom in New York City tomorrow.

All joking aside, it is one of those little things, a blade of grass stabbing through the asphalt, that encourages me a bit. Tocqueville found American’s obsession with what he called associations to be an important part of what made American liberty work:

The political associations that exist in the United States are only a single feature in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country. Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.

The fact that even in New York City, citizens are willing to commit little acts of subversion in league with others, often strangers, says the flame has not been extinguished entirely. The current arrangements cannot last and that means they will not last. The arithmetic makes it so. The question is what comes next. If Putin is right and we’re just a bunch of chumps like everyone else, then what comes next is going to be grim. If these little dinner clubs are any indication, maybe what comes next will not be so bad, perhaps even better than what we see now. It is a reason to be pessimistic in the short term, but optimistic in the long term.