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Based on what I know (including memory of his presidency), Reagan had the following tripartite belief system, united by his belief in the dignity of the individual as God's highest creation:

1. Economic freedom. Government intervention in the economy is almost always a mistake, period.

2. Traditional mores. By the time he ran for president in 1976 he was pro-life to the core. He was for returning prayer to the schools (something, BTW, we never hear about any more). He loved America because America was worth our love and sacrifice, and wasn't ashamed to say so.

3. Anti-communism. Communism was both a threat to America's continued existence and to the rights and dignity of people all over the world. It had to be defeated.

So what would he make of some of our modern controversies? How would he have reacted to 9/11? Devastating retaliation to be sure, but would he have tried to do all the democracy-building, à la Pres. Bush? I think he did believe that liberty was the aspiration of all people, which experience has taught me is probably not true. But the Cold War was central to his foreign-policy vision, and I don't know what he would've wanted to do with American power in a post-Soviet world.

Gay marriage? Such a thing would have been unimaginable in 1989 when he left office, so I'm not sure it's possible to conclude anything from his writings and speeches. He might have accepted it as a matter of state law on federalist grounds. But he might also have viewed it as a violation of God's law, and therefore unacceptable. Would he have made it a central issue, the way abortion and school prayer were for him? Who knows?

He almost certainly would have been anti-amnesty (which may be a minority view now), because the law matters, and he was burned in 1986. But he wasn't worried about immigration per se, the "invasion," the way some nativists have been in the last two decades. I think he saw legal immigration as a validation of the American idea.

I know in his day he opposed "socialized medicine," and I think he would've thought the ACA a profound threat to the American experiment. He'd probably campaign energetically for full repeal, and replacement with something far more market-oriented. He'd be disappointed, I think, with the increasing get-along-to-go-along attitude and lack of vision of the current GOP. This would have been huge for him.

Other people who remember his public life may have different interpretations, and I'd be glad to hear them.