A video of conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk is recirculating across social media, highlighting the hypocrisy, and the hostility toward freedom, that pervades the ideology of socialists. 

At Politicon in 2018, Charlie debated Hasan Piker, now a prominent progressive kingmaker. During the exchange, Charlie pressed the champagne socialist on why he refuses to practice what he preaches, despite having every freedom to live by his socialist principles within a free-market society. 

Piker’s response was revealing, that socialism cannot work unless the rest of society is forced to participate as well. In other words, socialism depends on the power to force others into compliance. That rejection of individual freedom is precisely what makes the ideology so dangerous.

"Why don't you give 95 percent of your money away and go live on a commune?" Charlie asked. 

"Do you really think that that's how it works?" Piker asked. "Do you really think that's how it works?"

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"Why not? Go live what you preach," Charlie said. "I am a free market capitalist. I employ people. I took a risk. I have my own start-up business. Every single day, I practice what I preach."

"He wants other people to contribute to what he considers to be a good idea, what he considers will make the world a better place," he continued. "You have the freedom to go live as a socialist. Go do it, Hasan. What's stopping you?"

This is what lies at the heart of socialism: not merely a willingness to impose force, but the belief that socialists need not create anything themselves, they need only redirect what others have created. They seek to become society’s central planners and arbiters, rather than its producers.

Why does Piker refuse to live in a commune? Because that would not remake all of society according to his warped vision. In a commune, he would be the one required to contribute, not the one demanding that others do so. And he would not hold the power to reorganize society in socialism’s image. 

Freedom is not enough for Piker and his DSA brethren. They seek to win the freedom, through elections, to restrict everyone else’s.

It remains a tragedy that Charlie was taken from the world so soon. He would have been a formidable warrior against the rise of democratic socialism across the United States, and an even more formidable opponent against the continued rise of Hasan Piker.