[Nono]

Much as I hate to counter the Americano-centric trend in this thread, I'd like to return to the original question: "What is left and right?"

Though both terms get tossed around pretty mindlessly at times, it seems to me that the best lens to view them through is an economic one: What role does government play in the economy? To me, rightists believe in economic laissez-faire and leftists believe in government measures that have the effect of redistributing wealth within society.

Yet outside the realm of economics, right-wingers are usually associated with "law and order". Though to me this often means simply lots of cops to protect the swagger of the rich and prevent the lower orders from getting out of hand, it's nevertheless a striking fact -- in my experience at least -- that the same people who believe in their limitless right to enrich themselves at other's expense often have a pretty demanding code in terms of social convention.

Leftists don't (necessarily) conform to the flip side of this picture. Many are motivated by religious or other types of moral code. And for sheer autoritarianism you can hardly beat the large-scale collectivist experiments of the 20th century.

To get back to the US, what comes to mind when one says "right-winger" there is a strong believer in authoritarianism. Americans use the code words "conservative" and "liberal", but it isn't always clear just what "conservatives" are trying to conserve and what "liberals" would like to liberate. Certainly US "liberals" believe in some degree of wealth distribution bolstered by government action to protect civil liberties (the rights of citizens), i.e. X is a citizen and therefore has the same rights as citizen Y, regardless of personal income, ancestry, etc.

For my part I'm on the left since I think some sort of state action (democratically guided) is needed to override the law of the jungle, which otherwise prevails by default owing to human evolution (all those caves...).

That said, it's probably impossible to establish an objective scale. I think the term originated in the post-revolutionary parliament in France, where one faction sat on the right and the other on the left (who's point of view?).