The differences between our two political parties’ priorities could not have been clearer than during President Joe Biden ’s State of the Union address on Tuesday and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s response. Biden’s speech was his attempt to establish a vision for a new liberal order in which big government and cultural leftism reign supreme. Sanders’s response was an excellent reminder that that’s not what the public wants.

“Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight,” Sanders said. “Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols. ... That's not normal. It's crazy, and it's wrong."

How right she is.

Colorado baker Jack Phillips did not ask to be harassed in court for nearly a decade. All he wanted to do was operate his business according to his religious convictions, yet he’s been forced to defend his right to do so repeatedly because of the Left.

Likewise, teenage activist Chloe Cole did not ask to take on the legal burden of the battle over gender ideology. But leftists’ insistence that surgical and chemical sex-change treatments be made available to children too young to know any better has forced her to seek accountability on their behalf.

Parents did not ask to take on the responsibilities of local government. But education bureaucrats’ relentless efforts to turn their children into ideological warriors forced them to take over their local school boards and demand accountability.

The list goes on and on.

If Republicans have become more aggressive in the culture war over recent years, it is because they had to. There wouldn’t be a need for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to strip tax benefits from Disney if Disney wasn’t determined to push toxic racialism and radical gender ideology onto impressionable children in Florida and the rest of the country. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares would not need to launch a civil rights investigation into Fairfax County’s schools if those schools hadn’t deliberately deprived students of merit awards in the pursuit of “equity.”

But Republicans must also understand that as hard as they might hit back, the Left will swing even harder. Biden made that clear during his speech on Tuesday when he referenced the need for so-called “gender-affirming care” for gender-confused youth and his support for unfettered access to abortion. He intends to continue using the full weight of the federal government to push this agenda, and it does not matter to him that the vast majority of the public is far to the right on these matters than he is.

This is why the culture war is inevitable. The topics driving the national debates of today — education, transgenderism, critical race theory, and more — will eventually touch every single one of us. And if Republicans don’t have the stomach to do what it takes to force the Left back toward the center, then they should step down and make room for those who will.