This woman misses the point by a god damned MILE, and she's clearly not worried about that fact. Holy damn.

Alright, here's the thing: exactly how a word started out to mean doesn't mean a fucking thing if that's not how people actually use it today, and her arguments are absolutely childish (and she heavily and selectively quotes wikipedia to make it look like it supports her argument, which it patently does not). The best part is that

First of all, yes, 'left-' and 'right-wing' were taken from seating arrangements in the new assembly during the Revolution; and yes, those who sat on the right supported the ancien regime. Unfortunately, the very concept of defining "right-wing" as "resembling the ancien regime" would have her laughed out of any political science department in the Western world - because it came not from their support for specific policies, but due to their suppport for specific policies to retain the strength of TRADITIONAL institutions, all while those who sat on the left were agitating for new institutions.

Now, I could simply tell you to bloody read the wiki articles she's trying to pass off on you, desperately hoping you'll take her word over theirs, but that seems the lazy way out. So I'm going to attempt to define to you the way the terms are used in every political science course I've ever taken (and why defining the Norwegian labour party as "right-wing" is the biggest crock of shit in history, thanks).

Now, there are two ways in which we might today define left- and right-wing, but neither one of them squares with Ms. Loesch's bizarre attempt to apparently distance herself and her beliefs from the fact, gasp, someone who did bad things might have agreed with her on something.

The first, less culturally specific way is to define left- and right-wing by their openness to shifts in the status quo. By this definition, a conservative supports traditional institutions and traditional political arrangements - and "tradition" can very much be a rallying cry for these political movements. Think opposition to gay marriage by many cultural conservatives around the developed world, for instance. A reactionary will support the traditions and institutions of a past, real or imagined - this also includes Russians agitating for a return of the Soviet Union.

Conversely, a (North American) liberal will support gradual changes to society, while a radical will support rapid shifts to new institutions, political systems, etc. Perhaps you can already tell, but though these definitions are interesting, they're not generally the ones we use to describe our politics today. A few reasons for that, but the big one is, it's really hard to shoehorn any multi-dimensional political movement into it. Functionally all movements will have various elements to it, conservative, liberal, radical, reactionary, whatever.

That said, the system we do use in general parlance today is very culturally specific. It can really only apply as-is to Western liberal democracies with histories of industrialism, because it's based on a shared political and economic heritage that most of these states have (and it also thinks Ms Loesch's definitions are ridiculous).

Under this system, the left- and right-wing nomenclature most often applies to primarily economic beliefs, with the 'left' representing Marxists, socialists, social democrats, and the moderate centre-left (in North American nomenclature, this is where "liberals" sit). The right includes economic systems which are in general opposed to these models, and can include conservatives, Christian democrats, (European) liberals, libertarians, and many nationalist movements.

That's it. That's the basic definition of left- and right-wing for most of the developed, Western world today. It's also the reason many, many political philosophers are attempting to move away from the single-dimensional left/right scale. It's only of very limited use (although all use is in direct contradiction to how your little link uses it).

Now, if she'd simply stuck to a critique of the one-dimensional left/right system, it may have been interesting, possibly informative. Instead she twisted the meaning of left/right through selective reading and quoting of Wikipedia. Seriously, have you in fact read the relevant openings of those Wiki articles? I can't believe she thought she'd get away with that.