The FAQ at Right Wing News has the follow blibbet that I found made quite a good point:

What Do You Mean By 'Right Wing'?: In the US, the terms right wing and Conservative are largely synonymous. Conservatives in the US support small government, capitalism, a fairly strict reading of the Constitution (although not as strict as Libertarians) and traditional American values.

Right Wingers in the United States are not to be confused with right wingers in Europe who are basically defined as whoever the "elites" in Europe don't support. The conventional definition of a right winger in Europe currently tends to paint people who are nationalistic, "anti-immigrant", and anti-UN as right wing. So Jessie Helms, Joe Lieberman, and Stalin would all be considered right wing by European standards.

Although he leaves the "Traditional American Values" meme pretty wide open to interpretation, this is pretty good summary of one of the biggest reasons why so many Europeans see the US as backward and volatile.   It's also a big part of why I cringe everytime I see BBC coverage of US Politics beginning with the catch phrase "right wing US president George Bush, in a news conference today..."  

As RWN points out, there is a very different set of meanings associated with European rightwing-ness and it's American counterpart.  American Right-Wing-Ness is more Libertarian or Classical Liberal while European Right-Wing-Ness tends to be more reactionary / nostalgic. 

Memetically, I often characterize American Classical Liberalism as driven by Freedom while European rightwing-ness as driven by NationalPower concerns.

Within the US, a similar difference of meaning exists within the US among large swaths of the "lay Left wing." 

Many lay Left commentators have a hard time grok-ing that the right wing does actually subscribe to an intellectually coherent set of ideals.   Hence the underlying, often unstated, accusation that "right wing / conservative" beliefs stem from a backwardness of thought.   And the corresponding, occasionally stated, assumption that "liberal / left wing" beliefs somehow indicate more education.

We also see one angle of the axiomatic Meme debate.   While "conservatives" tend to value Freedom and liberals Equality, the "lay Left" in the US often -- very carelessly -- defines the camps based on counter definitions.    For example, if "we" are for Equality, then "they" can't be anything but anti-Equality.   If "we" are Pro-Peace, then "they" must be Pro-War.  And hence, the popular image that the Right is made up of "rich, old, white men."

A large part of the confusion here is that the term "liberal" has been applied in a rotating way to a variety of ideologies  over the years.   There was a day, for example, when the founding fathers were considered the flaming Liberals of their time.     

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UPDATE: VERY good series of clips from Mindles Dreck on the contention that "Liberal=Smart"

Quoting Best of the Web, Dreck provides this example:

...In short, universities want people of some depth, subtlety and intelligence. People like that usually vote for the Democrats. So what?

A worthwhile read.

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UPDATE2: Jane Galt has this little snippet that applies to the first topic of this post -- Euro vs. US differences in the definition of "Right Wing"

It's interesting, when you hang out with Europeans, to find how different our conception of liberal/conservative is. Even liberal Europeans are in many ways more socially conservative than conservative Americans; they're willing to tolerate a degree of enforced conformity that is quite amazing to an American. Though they may argue about what the One Right Way to do things is, they have little problem with the state, not to mention the neighbors, deciding there is a One Right Way and setting policy around that ideal.

Which I suppose just feeds into the prevalance of the idea, even among conservatives, that there is also a One Right Way for the economy, and that the state should be the driver behind that as well.

Many of my European friends tell me that to them, the political spectrum in America seems bizarrely cortated -- they have parties much farther to the left, and even some much farther to the right (socially), than ours. But on the other hand, the substantive disagreement between their parties is not between more or less state intervention; it is over how, not whether, the state should run people's lives.

This quote, of course, also loops in ideas about European faith in Technocracy as well.

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