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Join a Club, Not a Team

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Remember that old Groucho Marx line about not wanting to join a club that would have him as a member? Well, at the risk of ruining the line forever, what exactly is the joke there?

On the obvious, surface level, the joke is about the divided consciousness of the upwardly-mobile striver. Groucho wants to join the best club because he is trying to rise in the world – and membership in that club will prove that he has done so. But if the club is willing to let an upstart like him join, how good can it really be? The only way out is to be conscious of the dilemma, and to laugh at it.

On another level, though, the joke is about Groucho’s refusal to join. It’s not that any club that would accept him has proven itself to have too-low standards; it’s that Groucho has such absurdly high standards that he finds himself lowered by any association. This is Groucho not as the immigrant striver but Groucho as a kind of Alceste figure of negative romanticism.

I’m meditating on Groucho because today, my job is to ask you to join our club – and become a member of The American Ideas Institute, which publishes The American Conservative. And I have a funny feeling there are more than a few negative romantics out there among our readers who will bristle at the suggestion that they affiliate.

Well, allow me to make the argument that, in this case, we may be the club for you. After all, just about the only thing we have in common here at TAC is that we all chose this place as the place to hang our hats in spite of its extremely limited resources. Because this is the place where our hat can hang according to its own fancy, even if that fancy is to disdain the comportment of its fellow hats.

Which makes it not a bad club to hang out in.

So: If you enjoy hanging out with us here, and in print, consider membership. It’ll help the clubhouse stay open. And you might even discover that membership has its pleasures even – especially – when it offers precious little privilege.

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