Conservatives these days are rightly debating the proper role of local, state, and federal governments in the culture war.

Public schools run by Democrats are guiding troubled youth toward transgenderism and then conspiring to keep their parents in the dark about it. They are also putting pornography in the school libraries and attacking anyone who objects.

Supposedly responsible adults push children toward irreversible harm in the name of transgender ideology. Local governments parade drag queens before children as part of a deliberate attempt to reshape children’s views of sex and sexuality.

Corporate America gets on board with nakedly partisan political campaigns by Democrats grounded in lies .

All of these culture-war attacks from the Left involve Democrat-run governments or Democratic politicians at some level. The question is how the Right should respond.

For decades, Washington conservatives responded to culture-war offensives by saying, “Let’s disarm the state and preserve for ourselves our spheres of autonomy.” Trump’s election in 2016 was a rejection of that “let’s make peace” streak on the Right. In Trump’s wake, we’ve seen all sorts of Republican politicians calling for a counteroffensive in the culture war.

Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and J.D. Vance (R-OH) have talked this talk. Perhaps nobody has walked the walk as much Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who punished Disney for its obnoxious, anti-child woke politics. He is clearly trying to steer the state’s educational system away from left-wing pedagogy. For that, DeSantis has received plenty of criticism, including some from the Right.

I think there’s a debate to have over DeSantis’s policies and philosophy. But some Republicans have the worst possible criticism of his approach. Here’s Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) on national TV criticizing DeSantis: "If we're trying to beat the Democrats at being big-government authoritarians, remember what's going to happen. ... They'll start penalizing conservative businesses and conservative nonprofits and conservative ideas. That is the worst precedent in the world."

Maybe Sununu wants to rephrase that one. Or maybe Sununu failed to notice the nature of the culture war for the last decade or two.

The Obama administration tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraceptive coverage. Obama tried to bar religious schools from having moral standards for their employees. The American Civil Liberties Union has spent years suing Catholic hospitals for not performing abortions. Colorado’s state government punishes every religious conservative it can for crimes such as baking-cakes-while-Christian.

Democrats have made it their stated goal to shut down pro-life crisis pregnancy centers . The Biden FBI has launched a crusade to file flimsy and obviously trumped-up federal charges against every pro-lifer it can.

And you can tell from the news media’s tone that another holy war is coming, targeting religious schools.

So, no, Sununu. I am not worried that the Left might start using the government to target conservative institutions when it has been doing so overtly for years.

About 12 years ago, I used to argue that libertarianism was the proper conservative stance in the culture wars. I’m less sure now, but I think there’s a solid case to be made that increasing government power over private institutions will always help the Left. That’s because conservative institutions tend to be organic institutions of civil society and progressive institutions are more likely to be top-down entities aimed at reshaping society.

Sununu could argue that Big Government is always a losing game for conservatives, and it would set up a good debate. But he should stop pretending that the Left isn’t already using Big Government in the culture wars.