You need to be talking not just about how we unilaterally repeal all of their regulations sure the nexte Elizabeth Warren administration cannot put them back in. We need a constitutional amendment. You should start saying the words regulation and freedom. I am jewish. I think the media slander of you, i know exactly what you mean. You are 200 correct. If you are in new york, it would be a privilege to take you to lunch or to the opera. Sen. Cruz i appreciate that. Thank you so much for everything you do. Ted cruz 2024. Sen. Cruz thank you very much. [indiscernible] the nebraska senator outlined his views on the u. S. Constitution and how they relate to the scope and size of government. From the Federalist Societys National Lawyers convention, this is 45 minutes. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I want to welcome everyone to the 15th annual lecture. Im the president of the society. The memorial lecture series started shortly after 9 11 with ted olsons inaugural election. Lecture that reminded us how to be an american and how legal tradition is a critical part of our identities. Ted and barbara understood this connection. We want the lecture series to remind lawyers of that so they foster principles that expand freedom and the rule of law. Other lecturers have included the man who this convention is honoring, justice scalia, judges chief Justice Roberts edith , jones, former attorney general michael mukasey, peter teal, and senator tom cotton. That brings us to todays lecture. It will be my honor to introduce senator ben sasse. After graduating from Harvard College where he went on a wrestling scholarship and earned a history phd at yale. He worked for private equity firms before becoming the president of Midland University which he pulled out of difficult financial straits. Then he ran for the senate. Since he has been elected senator, he has not only done a couple of things that i will mention quickly, but he is also has also moonlighted. He has driven for uber and my understanding is he has a fivestar rating. [laughter] [applause] in addition to his bio and his driving, i would add that senator sasse, despite his youth, exemplifies the idea our founders had for the senate. Some wise heads will be focused on the good of the country and who would look towards the ways in which our republic needed to meet the ever adjusting challenges of governing a free people. I think the senator may have a little to say about that and i am honored to welcome him. Sen. Sasse . [applause] senator sasse it is an honor to be here. When he mentioned the driving, i imagine some of you were sucking up as you are trying to get out here. I work tours all the time and we never had a press strategy around it. It is pretty obvious that was a mistake. I have a brand that has been tied to the president ial nominee a lot for the last nine months, not something i have been seeking. If i had known that i could just drive uber, i wouldve gotten out of the doghouse. That would have been a helpful step to take. For those of you who dont know, i want to talk about how we shouldnt have republican and democratic categories on a whole lunch of the execution of law in the article two branch. We should not have republican and democratic categories in judging. There are whole bunch of places we should not have those categories, and i dont want to assume all of you are as oriented as i am, but i assume that most of you are. One of the great things i learned driving this weekend, one of them is that town halls are not always totally representative of the public at large. The people who come to them tend to be more obsessively focused on politics and policies than the public in general. If you do a work tour, you are in a service posture and you learn about different industries, but you also just talk to people in daytoday life and you learn things that are different than just town hall meetings. I do town halls, but i also do them because i have three little kids. My daughters are 15 and 12. My son is five. I am only one of five people in the senate who has not been a politician before. That might be a good thing. But im the only guy in the senate that does the family commute. If youre the only one doing something, it probably means you are a naive rookie and probably a fool. I dont want to be away from my kids all day every week. But i dont know what they would do in washington. I live in nebraska and come back and forth every week and bring with me whichever kid mom is most sick of. [laughter] this week, i have my fiveyearold son and that is a new bag of worms to have running around the senate. He is not bashful about asking questions during my committee hearings. When i do work tours at home, it is a chance to make my children suffer. We feed cattle at 5 00 in the morning and i want them to have that work ethic experience of having to get up and get out and do something when it is cold and you dont feel like doing it. When i drove this weekend, it was hardly because i am a nerd interested in the disintermediation for parts of the service economy, and i wanted to talk to the kinds of consumers of the product but the wanted to get to know n people driving. I know that if you drive on game day in lincoln, you find out they have a market oriented lever to make sure they have enough supplyside of the bar district. If you throw up in an uber, you will be charged 150. [laughter] this is because the contractor is driving his or her own vehicle. I have learned a lot that may not seem like it is directly relevant, but in certain ways i think it is relevant to what we want to talk about tonight. Before we do that, i want to say directly in front of 600 of his closest friends, what a privilege it is to follow ted olson in this lecture by 15 years and to be here celebrating barbara. [applause] sen. Sasse she was an incredibly special woman, and even if you are like me and do did not really know her, i met her in social circles and passing and do not really know her at all but knew her , largerthanlife personality and convictions and commitment to try and persuade other people about the american idea. She is an impressive person and to be able to honor her legacy and speak tonight is a true honor. I began to write some notes about her as a tribute and then , frankly i realized that what i was going to say probably was not as meaningful as being able to give you all a reminder of what you heard last year. Ive read some of the lectures that preceded tonight, and last year when tom cotton gave his lecture, he talked about this guy he referred to as susan davis for a while, which is the stage name of anna cotten. She is from west point, nebraska, about 30 minutes from where i live. It is one of the largest cattle counties in nebraska. Nebraska is the largest cattle state in the nation, take that you texans. [laughter] sen. Sasse when she got to the law school, she found this institution called the Federalist Society. There was a chapter there that made a big impact on her life. Tom is married to a woman, and as he put it, the mother of my son. And she was formidably shaped because of things and investments people have made before, and those people are you all, there are now 60,000 alumni 36 years. Ver anna benefited from the fact that barbara had been the founder of that chapter. Tom said this, he gave a lot of personal details and then he discussed character that invests in future generations. He gave a beautiful, long paragraph and said this about someone like barbara. Aristotle, the first great teacher of character, wrote a lot about character formation, and the only way to develop character is the hard way. In other words, there is no royal road. The way of making each twice each day for 1000 days and is then for another 1000 days, the way of listening to ones conscience when pleasure beckons developing theor judgment to see the good in both the circumstances immediately present and in eternal truths. Aristotle teaches the true virtue is not only knowing good but doing it, also, for he says that we are not studying to know what virtue is but to become good, for otherwise there would be no profit in this. The key to Character Development for aristotle is practical wisdom, the ability to observe circumstances combined with knowledge and right principles to reach sound judgment and in moral matters. It is the exercise of practical wisdom in every situation that leads to virtue. He said this as well, to do this to the right person at the right extent at the right time with the right motive in the right way, this is not for everyone nor is it always easy, therefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble. Let us applaud the fact that that character was barbaras. [applause] sen. Sasse there are a whole bunch of reasons why it is daunting to stand in front of a group as auguste and learned as this, not least of which is that i am not an attorney. I join with you because of what the Federalist Society has been fighting for, but i do not have your training, and so there are a whole bunch of places i can step in potholes. I am a historian by training and was a College President for five years before running for office, but for most of my 25 years as an adult, i have worked for a consulting group, a consulting firm, and i have gone into organizations that were a mess, and been part of helping leaders and boards asking questions about whether their institution is accomplishing what it set out to accomplish. Maybe it should be retired. Maybe your philanthropy project succeeded at its mission. Maybe its mission was written for a time 10 years ago and did not succeed but it doesnt make sense anymore. Sometimes institutions need to die and cultural pluralism enables that kind of experiment in voluntary organizations and that is a good thing. I came here tonight to speak primarily about successes and some adjacent problems that are not a criticism but a larger cultural problem i would refer to as the crisis of cultural catechesis. The fact that we have been raising a couple of generations of american orphans in the sense that president reagan used to warn that in any Free Republic you are only one generation from the extinction of freedom. If you do not pass on the meaning of america to the people need to be ruling america, because we dont believe in a a professional, incumbent class, if the people who are supposed to rule america in 10, 20 and 30 years do not understand what america is, if they do not understand the american idea, freedom will slip away. We have, for nearly half a century, stopped discussing who we are as a people. We dont have a shared understanding of these things, and that is not precisely the Federalist Societys mission. I was going to give you a brief history of the Federalist Society and celebrate some of the high moments over the last 35 years. Partly as a way to laud you, but also to focus in my preparation and learn more, and as a former professor, i learned selfishly and then i have the excuse as an audience. [laughter] sen. Sasse i was heading into teaching you a history of the Federalist Society and then i was going to have an analogy of religion in the early modern period. I say that because i am an academic historian and my mom believes i wasted all my years in new haven. I have to prove her wrong once a year. I manufacture a reason to give a history lecture. I also think there are probably a whole bunch of cultural and religious pluralism jokes i can make as a protestant at a time when the Supreme Court has a vacancy and my people are unrepresented on the court. [laughter] [applause] sen. Sasse i had a disparate impact joke and an affirmative action joke but i will spare you all of that. But there is a really important thing that happened in the 10 years after the reformation. The reformation starts as an intellectual debate about how people are saved and theologians are debating in latin and in a Specialized Institution of a hierarchal church. And yet by the 1580s, there is a Reformation Movement and a counter Catholic Movement that are heavily involved with laity. How you went from an intellectual debate among clergy in latin to a Mass Movement relates to a moment in the 15271528 period, when that is Martin Luther assumed that the debates he was having were surely reaching the people. And then he left academic lectures and federal society conferences. Martin luther left and went out into saxony and started interviewing pastors and mothers and dads and 14yearold kids , and he came to the conclusion that they dont have any idea what we are talking about. This movement is not actually penetrating. It is having political implications. The world was being turned upside down in a whole bunch of ways about how people might let the next holy Roman Emperor but , it was not reaching the masses. The catechism Movement Starts in 1528 and 1529, and what i had come to originally speak about was that. I was going to talk about the difference between the movement you have been so successful at, the fact that before 1981 at yale and 1982 at the conference, that brought 200 law students from 20 law schools and in 1985 , when general lees addresses the aba and talks about original intent and the debates that followed for the next 45 years that went from original intent to original public meaning and all the jokes we have about how legislative history doesnt matter. You go through this moment where we get to a place to think how stunning it is when Justice Kagan is at her confirmation and she proclaims we disagree with her about what she thinks she means when she says it, but it is a pretty stunning thing about the success, the founders, the nurturers and investors in this movement that Justice Kagan would say, were all originalists now. She said we are all originalists now. We dont think she really gets it. [laughter] sen. Sasse and yet, you cannot just say the texts are irrelevant. That is an unbelievably interesting and fascinating thing. As i was thinking about what it was going to say, i admit, my skepticism about the nominees of both of the parties over the course of the last 69 months to did not have to do with speculation about how the election would turn out. The concerns i had about executive restraint in both parties. I admit, i was surprised by the outcome last tuesday night, and i realized there are all sorts of new moments of opportunity because of this not just because there are policy preferences that will be advanced by president elect trump that i appreciate more than the policy preferences that would have been advanced by secretary clinton, and not just because i think it is highly likely that his first nominee for the court will come from that list of 21. Those are really great things. Twobut i also think there might be a new moment of opportunity, and i would like to explore the a little bit tonight about what the opportunity for american citizenship might be in the strange time we are now entering. I did not pivot what i am going to talk about because i thought of it on my own. I will admit a little bit of butterflies to say this. I am pivoting what im going to talk about because of how many of you in this audience reached out to me concerned about your own organization. What is it like to be the nonattorney giving the Barbara Olson lecture and then tell you that you need introspection. You have two big and important projects on the agenda. You have talked about the article one project and you have talked about Regulatory Reform, and you have a standing mission to serve as gatekeepers of the kind of people who should be on the federal bench. In all sorts of fundamental ways, you are about advancing an organization that teaches at law schools across the country, were where not a lot of other people are advancing this vision of the founders understanding of separation of powers, of limited government, of checks and balances. These are beautiful things that our people do not understand. Right now, current polling data shows that 41 of americans under age 35, 41 of americans under age 35 think the First Amendment is dangerous. Because you might use your freedom of speech to Say Something that would hurt someone elses feelings. That is actually quite the point of america. [laughter] [applause] sen. Sasse for those of you who need a trigger warning or want to flee to a safe space, let me for on warn you. Our founders in virginia, there were a bunch of materialist, commercial folks. So we will ignore those. By large, the american founding was led by a whole bunch of people who differed about the nature of god and heaven and hell and how salvation might be achieved. And they came from a continent where people had been thinking for about 100 years that you should kill each other if you disagreed about those things. You should spill blood over those questions. Hear me clearly, i think those questions are critically important. I think those questions are more important than policy and politics. I also think the american experiment is the most glorious experiment in the history of the world because it takes seriously the human soul, it takes seriously conscience, it takes seriously persuasion and the idea that if you differ about really big and important things, you cant solve that by bodily violence. Instead, we have this crazy idea that we will come together in a community. We will expand the domain or the reach, as madison would have said, to incorporate more and more people with more and more disagreements so we can get to a place where everybody understands themselves to be a minority. And if every american understands themselves to be a credo minority, and honey, if youre watching on cspan, i except for you [laughter] sen. Sasse the founders were scared to death about the tyranny of the majority, so they wanted to create a minority consciousness for all of us. The First Amendment, these great freedoms, a laundry list outside the document on purpose because our constitution is glorious because freedom comes first, net natural rights come god gives us first, with dignity, and we come together as a people to form a government as a secular tool to secure those rights and our prostitution enumerates the p