Pictured is former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. If you click that link to his name, you'll get some information about Sasse, provided by Wikipedia. Here's a quick excerpt, though, to save you the click:
Benjamin Eric Sasse was born February 22, 1972. He represented Nebraska in the United States Senate from 2015 to 2023. He is a member of the Republican Party. A critic of Donald Trump, Sasse is one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial. Sasse resigned from the Senate in January 2023 to become president of the University of Florida, and he resigned his position at the University in July 2024, citing his wife's health issues. In December 2025, Sasse announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.
Sasse is now writing opinion columns for The Wall Street Journal. Click the following link to read one of his columns, published in the Saturday/Sunday, May 9-10, 2026, edition of the paper. Sasse's column is titled, "Habits For Humanity In The Age of AI." It's a "gift article," which I believe means that no paywall will prevent your efforts to find out what Sasse has to say, even if you're a non-subscriber.
Among other things, Sasse says: (1) We're lonely; (2) We don't trust our institutions; and (3) We don't trust one another. Nonetheless, Sasse also says that "this is an incredibly exciting moment to live." The challenge, Sasse says, is "how to live with virtue and technology when technology tends to erode virtue and place and human texture." The proper response, Sasse says, is to "cultivate habits, community and a revivification of place."
It is encouraging to me that Sasse is up front about the difficulties we face, as we try to navigate our current situation. He is suggesting four starter habits: (1) Reading; (2) Hard Work; (3) Tech Sabbaths (and he doesn't mean a weekly worship of technology and its advocates, either; he means "abstentions from tech"). Finally, Sasse is recommending: (4) Serious Travel.
I think that what Sasse has to say is worth thinking about, and that his suggestions are pretty good. This is why I have provided you with his column in The Journal in the form of that "gift article." Let me just pile on with my own favorites, in addition to Sasse's suggestions: (1) Find Some Friends; (2) Get Involved In "Politics," along with those friends! This is really what we need to do, if we want to indulge ourselves in the satisfactions of "self-government."
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