This week was a lesson for many conservatives and libertarians who thought they could stop talking about social issues. The problem with that is the left will not stop using the culture as a way to divide and conquer. We as conservatives need to change the battlefield and the rules of the war and hit them back.

The progressive left is not content to “live and let live.” They’re not content to let conservative Christians and others who oppose them to live their lives. They’ve made it clear that will drive anyone who disagrees with their vision for the culture and society out of public existence. These cultural Marxists want to silence all dissent to them.

Ace had a fantastic piece yesterday responding to one of these “libertarians” who is taking the side of the Gay Mafia in Indiana. In the piece (which should be read in its entirety), he lays out what this culture war is really all about.

When Christians and their fellow-traveling conservatives (like me) were in more of a dominant social position, we didn’t have to think much about the dilemma of whether we would like a system by which we get to impose our Rules and Values on Others, or whether we would like to be free from other people imposing their Rules and Values on Us.

See, when you’re in a dominant social position, you don’t have to make that choice, because you get Both. You are in a strong enough position to not have to worry too much about a hostile majority pushing its Rules and Values on you. You are the Majority, or a Near Majority, at least; so you can push a regime which is more insistent on Conformity, because you are numerically strong enough to stop the worst abuses of a Conformity Regime from being inflicted on you.

But we’re not in that position any longer. We can longer use our numerical might to block other people’s aggressions in this sphere. We can no longer have our cake and eat it too; we must choose.

We must now begin choosing which is more important: A regime in which the Majority gets to Impose Rules on a Minority (hoping we can occasionally be the Majority and Impose some of our Rules), or a Regime in which the Majority is de-powered, so that any Minority (including, most importantly, us) is less likely to be bullied by the Majority at all.

That’s the choice we’re facing. The left wants to force all of America to conform to their view of the culture and to engage in a “Two Minutes Hate” against anyone who dissents. To counter this terrifying vision of conformity, we must build a culture of liberty and freedom. We have to stand opposed to any mob and resist the temptation to join one ourselves. Finally, we can’t ever forget that to “live and let live”, we have to let others do the same.

The left is determined to drive those out of public life they disagree with. It happened to Brendan Eich who was forced out at Mozilla for the crime of donating to the campaign supporting Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage in California. Former Sony Pictures Chairwoman Amy Pascal was fired after it was discovered that she sent a private e-mail making fun of President Obama by suggesting that he liked movies with black stars in them. The Pascal e-mail was only revealed when Sony was hacked. We saw it when the left tried to boycott Papa John’s over anti-Obamacare comments by its CEO and Chick Fil-A over its owner’s stance on gay marriage in 2012.

The college campuses all over the country are hotbeds of this nonsense. Colleges push nonsense about “white privilege“, “male privilege”, “cisgender privilege” and “Christian privilege.” University campuses are among the most hostile places for free speech in the country. “Safe spaces” are the norm where are places where speech that might hurt someone’s feelings is banned.

To make things worse, many conservatives and libertarians are sympathetic to this nonsense. Some conservatives are fine with the PC police turning everything gray and dull. It will make everyone fall in to line and they love order above everything else. That’s why they joined the attacks against Trevor Noah, the new host of “The Daily Show”, over his tweets about Jews and everyone else.

Meanwhile, some libertarians applaud the lynch mobs and the slander against gay marriage opponents. They see it as “the free market at work,” even though it’s a lynch mob going after someone for expressing their private opinion. Besides, they’re just icky Christians who don’t accept the cosmopolitan society. Think about how chilling it is for liberty and free speech. Just because someone can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.

These people need to be stopped and opposed at every opportunity. Those of us who love liberty can no longer sit back and “ignore the culture war” because the culture war is not ignoring us. We have to fight back and defend ourselves.

I want to be different because I am an individual. America is great is because we embrace our differences, but at the same time we come together over the big things such as liberty. The Latin phrase displayed on American coinage is E pluribus unum or “out of many, one.” American is composed of a nation of individuals, communities, and states that have joined together to form one country. We as conservatives and libertarians must fight to ensure that it stays that way, even if we don’t like some of those differences.

This is something the center-right needs to work on before we lose our country and what’s left of our liberties.