YUROP

In god we trust was added by the American right during the frenzy of the 1950's, with the argument was that it doesn't specify which god, so it's okay. Like, there are factions there, and to a degree in Canada that want to make Christianity official, but they're kind of radical.

Separation of church and state is embedded in the US constitution, even if they've always thought of themselves as a Christian nation. This is because it was founded by the day's radical left. Meanwhile, the German conservative might vote CDU.

or what the north american anglosphere has to say about Quebec’s secularism?

Nobody has a bad word to say about the quiet revolution, actually.

There was a bill written about Muslims and hijabs specifically, which was unpopular outside of Quebec and found to be illegal. And then a bunch of similar bills but with "no oversized crosses" added on. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.

Which goes back to the thing about multiculturalism. In Anglo Canada the mainstream debate is literally whether less integration is always better (postnationalism), or if there's some kind of common Canadian identity that you should have even if you're Muslim and speak Arabic at home. In Europe that would be radical, and the debate seems to be about whether the domestic culture should be allowed to mix or change at all.

Edit: If you yourself are French, that might be the one exception. There was a revolution around the same time as in America, and it left some of the same legacies.

I don't know. I mean, it's pretty easy to find uncontroversially evil people on the left as well. Jim Jones had some pioneering takes on racial harmony, and did not get along with the right of his day. Or cynical people on the left - ask Lemmy about if climate change is going to kill all humans in the next few decades.

The term itself comes from the French revolution, with the revolutionaries sitting on the left. Since then, you've had ship of Theseus things happen where a classical liberal might end up on the right, because they follow a chain of intellectual forerunners tracing back to someone opposing the French revolution. In other cases some kind of analogy is made, like the Japanese wartime government being right-wing because many of the dynamics were shared with the European right of the day. Or how Cato the Elder was "conservative" because he promoted a traditional way of life, even if that tradition was being bi and not reading.

All in all, left and right might be great names, because they're directions that always exist, but depend completely on where you're standing.

I think a better one is acceptance of change.

• Right: Resistant to change
• Left: Accepting of change

Sometimes change is good, sometimes the world is not ready. I think this aligns closely with "cynical" and "naïve" but just makes it more abstract.