Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. On a recent episode of 60 Minutes, interviewer Scott

Pelly said to his guest, you don't have much time. Why are you spending time doing this?

His guest, former U.S. Senator Ben Sass, who received a fatal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer back in

December, replied with a laugh, well, you invited me, so I assume you needed to fill some time.

Well, short of a miracle, Sass will not see his 14-year-old son grow up. He won't walk his daughters

down the aisle. And yet, he is right now teaching a nation, a stunning lesson about dying with dignity.

A former senator, SAS warns against the allure and the limits of political power while

proclaiming what matters so much more. Committed to free markets, he warns against the illusion

that more consumption will make you happier. He is at the same time optimistic about what technologies

might provide and also concerned about what's happened to our sense of self and happiness,

especially among young people. In all of this, SAS is not being stoic, as though his death is not

a big deal. He mourns what the loss means to his family. He regrets all that he missed while

traveling for work instead of

being at home. And he talks about the pain that cancer has brought to him. But how he is dying

is making right now a rare statement to the world. And it's being heard. As Dr. James Wood described

in a recent world opinion piece, in a culture that kills to avoid hardship

and hides death to avoid reckoning, a man dying well on high-profile platforms is a subtly radical

act. He is, without quite saying so, making an argument for life, for its dignity, its giftedness,

its meaning even at the last, end quote. Indeed, his voice is

especially powerful in a world like ours, one that continues to accept various forms of

euthanasia and doctor-assisted death. Across Europe, Canada, and a number of American states,

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