Left stands for individual liberty in opposition to the privileges of state, capital, religion, etc.

Left stands for looking at the concerns of oppressed people first, rather than comparatively well-off ones.

Left stands for support of revolutionary change, rather than the status quo. (ie: rebels v. tories)

Left stands for an inclusive ecumenicalism in opposition to provincialist conservatism.

The fact that the term “left” has been conflated so often with statist programs (and those who advocate and implement them) for massive intervention in the economy and people’s lives renders it effectively useless as a descriptive label without volumes of qualification, though there is a continuum here along which people’s political actions and positions can be placed relative to each other, provided that a clear metric is employed.

Given the descriptions above, one can see that some on the left — those at the extreme pole of the axis — reject the state entirely as solution to social problems. At the same time, nobody on the right does.

A recent exploration relevant to this topic was given by Brad Spangler.

Using the guideline here, many but not all self-identified libertarians fall on the left of the spectrum. One might surmise that a “left”-libertarian, then, is any who falls farther left of the midpoint of the libertarian spectrum, to whatever degree.

More than anything else, Keith pushes a sort of meta-strategy for anarchism which aims at pluralism and ecumenicalism and which suggests that all anti-state tendencies ought to unite against the principal enemy of liberty, the state itself, in preference to choosing lesser targets of activist action such as sexism, racism, homophobia and so on. The biggest tent possible, in other words, for the advance of anarchism as anti-statism, absent the baggage of a myriad of other issues.

Of itself, I believe this has great strategic value.

In his posting yesterday, though, Keith unambiguously betrays his own ugly prejudices in a bilious piece entitled “Is Extremism in the Defense of Sodomy No Vice?“:

Do we really attract more people into our ranks by having so many self-hating whites, bearded ladies, cock-ringed queers, or persons of one or another surgically altered “gender identity” in our midst? Is this really something the average rebellious young person wants to be associated with? Could we not actually attract more young rebels into our ranks if all of this stuff was absent? I believe we could.

Suffice it to say this I find this offensive on many levels.

Now, I’m all for Keith’s right to free speech. But I find that I don’t really care about Keith’s strategy.

The anarchist tent may, indeed, need to be bigger in order to achieve strategic goals. But here I see one arguing for a big-tent strategy giddily pushing marginalized groups out of the tent and encouraging others to do the same.

Not only is this a contradiction of the big-tent strategy itself, but it also pushes away all those who sympathize with those marginalized, traditionally hated out-groups. I, for one, am not going to be found standing up for the rights of bigoted assholes to be bigoted assholes, let alone lending them whatever credibility might attach in a given reader’s mind to finding such linked to at my own website.

And so today Keith disappears from my blogroll, and good riddance. For the moment he remains in my RSS reader, since I recognize that there is a fine mind at work in Keith, and one often worth reading, despite what I view as a clear deficit of empathy.

Without substantial work at repentance, Keith will not be welcome at my table, nor in my tent.