Public Execution is Public Law. Public Law Requires Public Witness.

Secretary Hegseth is right to argue for a public firing squad against Nidal Hasan.

Matthew G. Andersson | October 14, 2026

For readers old enough to remember some of our earlier conservative journalists, the name George Will may be familiar.  He still writes a column in the Washington Post, and is thought a mainstay of East Coast conservatism.  I met Mr. Will back in the 1970s when I was a young conservative student at the Watkinson School in Hartford, Connecticut.  Will was visiting his nearby alma mater, Trinity College, and spoke with some of us. We thought of him as a more approachable William F. Buckley, and his writing and thinking provided a role model for aspiring young American conservatives.

Buckley’s original “Sharon Statement,” drafted by M. Stanton Evans, was ratified in Sharon, Connecticut on September 11, 1960 by about 100 young conservatives, and subsequently considered the “foundational manifesto” of American conservative principles. George Will credited it as instrumental to the political principles behind Ronald Reagan’s eventual presidency.

In 2010, conservatives including Edwin Meese, Grover Norquist and others, produced the “Mount Vernon Statement,” which reinforced the same principles but with more emphasis on limited government in response to growing political progressivism, and its distortion of constitutional law. Will always seemed deeply aligned with such conservatism.

So it was with some surprise that I read Will’s recent Washington Post column that criticized the Trump administration’s position, announced by Secretary Pete Hegseth, concerning the use of a public firing squad execution against Nidal Hasan for his Fort Hood massacre that killed 13, and wounded 32.

But Will went further, turning mature political commentary into a personal tirade, starting with his essay title: “Fill the government with barbarians, you get barbaric government.” Then he goes on to moralize: “Pete Hegseth wants to morally instruct America with a public execution? The........

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