A government that claims the authority to kill persons after they have been subdued, disarmed, tried, convicted and confined in prison has made a startling claim about the nature of political power. It claims not merely the authority to protect the innocent from violence, but the authority to inflict violence when no immediate threat exists.
It claims that the taking of human life, which it rightly condemns when committed by private individuals, somehow becomes morally permissible when committed by government agents. This is the fundamental contradiction of the death penalty: Government killing the helpless protects the living.
The Declaration of Independence offers a radically different understanding of government. All human beings possess natural rights, and governments are instituted to protect those rights. Government’s just powers derive solely from the consent of the governed. Government is not the owner of our lives. It is our creature, established to protect rights that precede its existence. Its authority is limited, and it cannot legitimately claim powers that the people whom it governs do not themselves possess.
Individuals possess a natural right to defend themselves against an unlawful attack. They may use necessary and proportionate force to repel an aggressor. Because the people possess that right, they can delegate it to the government, including to a military for defensive purposes. Government’s legitimate authority to wage defensive war is a moral and legal derivation of the people’s preexisting right of self-preservation.
But what right does an individual possess to kill a defeated enemy who has surrendered, is disarmed and locked in a jail cell? What right does a private person possess to execute a prisoner who no longer presents an immediate threat? None. The right of self-defense does not include the right to kill a helpless captive as retribution for a past offense.
And if the people do not possess that right, how can they delegate it to government? The principle is straightforward: Government cannot legitimately acquire, through the consent of the governed, a power that the governed themselves do not possess.
Confinement protects society. Execution reveals the state’s claim to omnipotence.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plans to have a convicted defendant executed publicly and livestream the killing represent a particularly repulsive vision of state power. If implemented, such a spectacle would not demonstrate the strength of American civilization. It would advertise its moral depravity. It would turn the deliberate destruction of a human being into political entertainment, with the machinery of government serving as producer and promoter.
There is something profoundly disturbing about officials who would turn a human death into a public performance. What lesson would such a livestream teach? That the state is entitled to kill, that its violence deserves an audience, and that adults and children should watch with approval as the life of a powerless, wheelchair-bound prisoner is extinguished by military sharpshooters? That the proper response to wrongdoing is not the restraint of power but the celebration of its most lethal expression?
This is a cruel and unusual descent into barbarism, a glorification of government killing and an invitation to cultivate a culture of fear and death. Civilization advances when it restrains violence, even in response to terrible crimes. Barbarism advances when violence becomes an instrument of public spectacle and collective gratification.
The military’s involvement makes the proposal still more grotesque. The Department of Defense exists to defend the country against external threats, not to transform the execution of prisoners into a propaganda production. The armed forces should not be reduced to stagehands for a political morality play in which the government celebrates its power over a captive’s life.
A free society should be especially suspicious when government seeks to dramatize its capacity to kill. The Framers understood that all government power must be confined and limited, not worshiped. Publicly celebrated executions would encourage the opposite attitude: Reverence for the state’s ability to destroy rather than respect for its obligation to protect.
