Welcome to Planet Reagan.

If you don’t get the reference, don’t worry. You will before long, courtesy of something called the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project. If that group has its way, the former president’s name will soon be slapped on something near you. They’re out to re-christen every bridge, building, battleship and outhouse in homage to the 40th president.

You think I’m kidding? Think again.

It is the group’s stated goal to see some monument to Ronald Reagan erected in every state in the Union. Also, in every county in the Union all 3,067 of them. And that’s just the beginning. In addition, they want Reagan tributes in all the former communist countries that fell when the Cold War ended.

They want Reagan’s likeness chiseled into Mount Rushmore, right up there with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. And they’re pushing to build a monument to Reagan on the Mall in Washington, despite the fact that a federal law signed by Ronald Reagan, yet! prohibits the erection of such a monument to anyone who hasn’t been dead at least 25 years. They want to name a mountain for him. Oh, and did I mention the movement to put Reagan’s likeness on the $10 bill?

I have no doubt that Ronald Reagan will loom large in history. Some have suggested that he and Franklin Roosevelt will be remembered as presidents who exerted the most profound and lasting influence upon America in the 20th century.

Which is not necessarily praise. Indeed, some of us might observe that if they want to accurately honor Reagan’s legacy, they ought to put his name on a homeless shelter. Or, considering the drug violence that ripped the inner cities during his presidency, maybe even a cemetery or two. One of the guys in the office suggests renaming the county of Contra Costa, Calif. Call it Iran-Contra Costa, instead. Badda-bing.

For all that, though, I have no beef with the idea of naming public works to honor Reagan. Heck, I’ve walked Malcolm X Boulevard in New York City and driven the Richard M. Nixon Freeway in Marina del Rey. You can hardly turn around in the South without bumping into something named for Jeff Davis. None of those men enjoys anything like universal veneration to the contrary, they are polarizing, controversial figures. Yet they’re loved by enough of us to be awarded such honors. And those who don’t love them simply learn to tolerate. It’s what you do in a pluralistic society.

Whatever you think of his presidency, Ronald Reagan isn’t exactly Charles Manson. So, fine, name a building after him. Name a highway or a school.

But put him on the Mall? On the mountain? On the money? Twelve short years after the end of his presidency? Even though he’s still alive? That’s just a bit ridiculous.

Unfortunately, perspective is not the Reaganauts’ strong suit. They seek a world where Ron is everything and everything is Ron. Where the reaganacity of the ronulent is exceeded only by the reaganacious ronnerity of the reaganified. These folks are so far over the top we’ll have to send a space shuttle to bring them home. But if their overreaching ambition makes you laugh, you’d better know something: While you’re chuckling, they’re ticking items off their to-do list.

They’ve already succeeded in naming a section of Florida’s Turnpike and all of Washington National Airport. There is an aircraft carrier and a federal office building named Reagan. Legislation to memorialize him on the Mall has been introduced in Congress. Two years ago, a GOP lawmaker proposed chiseling Reagan’s face on Rushmore. And they’re talking seriously about putting him on the 10-spot.

Frankly, if I were an admirer of the former president, I’d find this flurry of activity embarrassing. If Reagan’s presidency was, indeed, the best thing since Belgian chocolate, why do we need a national advocacy group to force us to acknowledge it? There’s something intellectually dishonest about the whole crusade. Something that bespeaks a profound distrust in the judgment of the people. Ironically, trust in the people’s judgment was supposed to be one of Reagan’s defining characteristics.

So why not let the people decide? Why don’t the Reaganauts simply trust that Americans will, in their own towns, and counties, and states and time, consider Reagan’s legacy and judge him as they see fit?

I think I just answered my own question.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.