Political Identity Crisis

The way they define left and right is not particularly strange or unorthodox, they just seem so from an American perspective. Defining the left/right divide in primarily economic terms is fairly standard in the study of politics in Europe (it gets confusing, of course, since 'far right' is agreed by convention to mean racist nationalism, which in some instances is not very economically right at all).

No, equally from both sides, since both liberals and conservatives in the US tend to discuss issues such as religion, abortion, gun control, the death penalty etc. as being on a left/right axis, while if you define the left/right divde in purely economic terms these issues are purely tangential. No, because the same terminology is used by right-leaning people. I think you may have misunderstood me, as this is a fairly value neutral concept. 'Left' refers to redistributive economic policies, and 'right' to economic liberalism.