I'm a Ronald Reagan Democrat, which may sound politically schizophrenic, but I think the party divide is mostly a myth these days. The right hand knows exactly what the subservient left hand is doing.

I believed Reagan when he talked about small business and entrepreneurship being the backbone of the economy. Reagan was a union president before he was governor of California, though I'd hardly consider the Screen Actors Guild representative of labor.

Reagan actually rode horses and didn't pretend to be a cowboy like the faker that now occupies the White House. We have seen pictures of the president riding a bike and driving a golf cart on his Crawford, Texas, ranch, but I defy anybody to produce a photograph of Bush on a living horse.

I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh describing the Democratic Party as "symbolism over substance" some years ago, not realizing it was doublespeak for the Republican game plan. Political parties are equally lacking in substance, but the current administration has taken symbolism to heights this country has never seen. A few loyalists still have W stickers on their cars, as if they're displaying the emblem of their favorite sports team.

Unfortunately, much of the fakery accepted as substance was seeded in the Reagan years and blossomed in the soil of the Bush administration that is rich in stuff that makes lies grow. I doubt Reagan would be pleased with what his policies have wrought. Instead of fertile ground for small business and entrepreneurs, America got corporatism.

The mergers and acquisitions of the '80s gave way to the corporate globalization of the '90s. The mom-and-pop stores closed and big business grew bigger, stronger and more ruthless. In this decade we heard a recording of Enron energy traders laughing as they purposely manipulated the market to fleece retirees out of a sizeable chunk of their fixed incomes. I don't believe Reagan would have found that amusing at all.

Reagan mentioned Temecula in a 1983 speech noting how citizens here came together to convince a developer to donate the land for the unincorporated community to build its own sports park, which is now named in honor of our former president. The Web site www.ronaldreagansportspark.com provides a wealth of information on the speech and the effort to build a monument to honor Reagan and those who helped in large and small ways to build the park.

The list of residents and local businesses that contributed money, material, time and labor for the community field is extensive. As I perused the list, I came across the name of a stationery store that appears to have gone out of business --ñ probably replaced by one of the big box office supply stores located on the commercial strips of most big cities in America.

Temecula's Little Professor bookshop also succumbed to the bookstore chains that moved in with the mall. It looks as though a number of those "can-do" local entrepreneurs found themselves undone by corporate expansion.

In that 1983 speech, Reagan mentioned that Americans as individuals contributed more than $48 billion to charitable causes in 1982, while the generosity of corporations was a trickle at just under $3 billion. Recent figures show a similar disparity of charity still exists. The human heart will always be more giving than that of a corporate body.

Paul Jacobs of Temecula is a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: TemeculaPaul@aol.com.