next, ron reagan, the son of former president, ronald reagan, recounting his father s personal life and political career. ronald reagan would have 100 on february 6, 2011. ron reagan remembers his father at politics and prose bookstore in washington, d.c. this is just under an hour. thank you, mike. is this on. can you hear me okay? all right. thank you, mike. pleased to be here on the very unlikely event. not that they don t do readings and things as they call them all the time. i m the unlikely part of this. because i never really intended to do anything like this. i m 52. i managed to get through at least half a century without ever considering to do something like this. but a little less than a year ago, it was february 6 last year, i was talking to my mother on the occasion of my father s 99th birthday when, of course, the 100 00th birthday came up. can you believe daddy is going to be 100. she calls him daddy of course to her kids still. i m saying to her, yeah, boy
to oppose capital punishment. i suspect, as i said, of franklin roosevelt i ve come to see him as i don t know who else would have taken up the cause against [inaudible] as well as he did the nazis as well as he did, and i think he s to be respected for that. so my views have changed a bit, and my way of writing has changed a bit. i remember in public nuisances i was extremely remember in public nuisances i was extremely critical of theodore white became a little teddy white. i wrote the denunciations of him. i have come to find teddy white in later years was a force for good in the world. i apologize for the things i said. host: you list arthur schlesinger as one of your favorite authors. guest: if you want the standard liberal view of america you can do no better than reading arthur schlesinger. he was a wonderful writer. i miss his passing and the passing of that whole generation that made up very thoughtful liberals. i am not sure that their heirs are living u
bold innovator is with great ideas eager money mad or reactionary, and something happens and this wonderful idea is born in someone s garage or attic and starts up again and this isn t so. there were a major public policy triumphs. they don t get to control the telegraph as well as the telephone. the separation principle that you write about so persuasively and movingly in your final section, radioactive 1927, keep at&t out of the content business, conduits are divided there. if you have not had a studio system and hollywood in which you have the coming together of people making the movies and the ownership of theaters the united states main never have established a dominant position in the world film business. we had a% of the world market. the europeans couldn t get their act together. we did and that made possible the creativity that led to the sustained development of hollywood. you also wouldn t have had the most heinous example of censorship in american history, priv