Sasse expressed dismay that “all across the industrialized, rich world, people have just stopped having babies in the last couple of decades” and “we’ve stopped having sex.” What’s “weird” about that, he said, is that babies, though inconvenient, are “the most glorious thing you can do to enrich your family and to make a bet on the future.”
In response, author Bethany Mandel posted, “Ben Sasse comes out in favor of sex and babies. Both are great. Highly recommend.” The former senator replied, “10/10.”
‘Become a Good Neighbor,’ Urges Ben Sasse
On “60 Minutes,” former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse said the problems in federal government result from shallow local communities. Instead of getting to know our neighbors, Americans cling to “their political tribe at a federal level,” he said. Tribalism reduces citizens to “stupid” conversations in bubbles, according to Sasse, who noted that social media worsens the problem.
The combination of tribalism and technology, Sasse said, prevents young people from learning humility, deferred gratification, information-processing, human interaction, rejection, and resilience. The former lawmaker urged Congress to address how artificial intelligence is altering the experiences of working and being human. “It’s pretty scary to not know what you’re going to do to add value for your neighbor 10 or 25 years from now,” he explained.
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America must build a “civilization of lifelong learners” and keep generations engaged with one another, Sasse advised. Consumerism leads to peer segregation, he said, so “young people don’t know old people, and old people don’t get to serve young people.”
In this broken world, Sasse said, power and government fall short, and our priorities must be family and community. Edmund Burke called those “little platoons,” explained Sasse, where you learn “how to love real flesh-and-blood people that you can hug, that you can cry with, that you can break bread with. And then the maturity of that love can be transferred onto something larger like your nation.”
“You need to actually coach Little League,” Sasse told listeners. “You need to shovel the driveway of the widow next door to you because she can’t.”
When asked about his “parting wish” for America, Sasse said:
We need to have more deliberation about our mortality and our finitude to therefore get back to wisdom about what living a life of gratitude looks like. And I’d like a lot more dinner tables to turn off the devices, put them out of the room, pour a big glass of wine, break bread together, and wrestle with some really grand questions about what you’re building for your family and your next generation.
If people start local and build little platoons of family, neighborhood, work, and church, Sasse said, the country’s future looks bright. He urged Americans not to “outsource your attention and your affections and your habits” to devices and AI. “We need to have a big shared project where we lock arms,” said Sasse, and “we need a communal conversation about how you use the technology instead of letting the technology use us.”
Among those who reacted to Sasse’s message was former NFL player Benjamin Watson, who called the interview “powerful.” Former Vice President Mike Pence described it as “profoundly moving” and thanked Sasse “for Your Personal Courage and Showing What it Means to Love Your Family and Love God.”
In response, the former senator joked that he “can still live another 50 years if @Mike_Pence has the courage.”
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i can still live another 50 years if @Mike_Pence has the courage https://t.co/w7HWHV4gx6
— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) April 28, 2026
