A historical story about the origins of Right v Left.
It all goes back to the French Revolution.
After the storming of the Bastille the National Assembly was established to make a new Constitution.
To the RIGHT of the President's Chair... were the supporters of the King and the "Old Order" along with clergy and monarchy.
To the LEFT of the President's Chair... was the revolutionaries and reformers including Jacobins. They sought to take power away from the King, Church and State.
VOILA!!! And it stuck.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Kinda like blue states and red states which is something that only goes back about 25 years as far as I know. Prior to 2000, TV networks used all kinds of different color combinations for electoral map coverage. Here's a screencap of a 1980 electoral map showing Reagan's victory:
In 2000 networks were using red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, but when the election went on for weeks and the electoral map was shown on TV every day, the colors stuck in people's minds, and since then red has been associated with Republicans and blue with Democrats.
