The big lesson of Reagan is: To think that he was some sort of simple figurehead and didn't do the thinking and simply read a script in front of him woefully underestimates him. Ronald Reagan was an extremely intelligent person with a real V8 engine under his hood.

To say that Reagan teaches us that we should be against amnesty for illegal immigrants is to contradict what Reagan himself stood for - that he was in favor of amnesty.

Reagan is held up to us as an example of never raising taxes. Correction: Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years as president. Why? He was a pragmatist, not doctrinaire. He saw problems emerging, and when his policies faltered he changed his views. Flexibility, not rigidity.

Ronald Reagan, whatever his pros and cons were, was a public servant in the end.

As I was growing up, you know, I'm a white Jewish American born to Holocaust parents. My father fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and my mother's family had fled the czars of Russia before that.

Elites are once again invoking Reagan, dropping their Gs and saying things in a folksy sort of way thats meant to capture the hearts of people. And its all fraud; its all stagecraft. And people are falling for a great deal of elite behavior in this country packaged as if its proletariat behavior.

There are people who are trying to advance themselves by wrapping themselves in Reagan.