1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

If you are willing to let the federal government kill people because it makes you feel safe, without legal justification, domestically or internationally, then you are not defending law and order. You are endorsing its suspension. You are declaring due process optional. No amount of moral disgust nullifies a person’s right to life or their right to defend themselves. That principle is not sentimental; it is foundational. Across borders, systems, and histories, states that consider themselves civilized converged on the same conclusion: the power to kill must be bound by law, process, and final judgment. This position is not foreign to American values. It is echoed in the Constitution, in the writings of the Founders, in international law, and in the very statutes governing drug enforcement. Every one of them insists on legal process, not execution by impulse. They exist because history demonstrated, repeatedly, what happens when states allow themselves to kill first and justify later. When people inside a self-described civilized society argue that these principles should be suspended when they feel strongly enough, they are not aligning themselves with civilization’s achievements. They are aligning themselves with its breakdowns. They are adopting the same logic used by authoritarian regimes, merely dressed in different language. Even if extrajudicial killing were to produce a measurable increase in safety, and that claim itself is dubious, it would not be meaningfully different from a purge that happens to be selective, or an extermination that happens to be bureaucratic. What distinguishes civilization from barbarism is not outcomes alone, but constraints. Once killing without law is accepted as legitimate, the category of who “deserves” it is limited only by fear and power. Vote yes on war powers resolution.