Last week Erick Erickson of RedState did a piece on the mopping up operations after the victory of gay marriage in what Steve Sailer calls “World War G.”

In Oregon, Aaron and Melissa Klein and their five children are losing their home due to bankruptcy. Their business, Sweet Cakes by Melissa, is going under.

Why would that be? Could they be part of the 30 million without health insurance? Not at all. The couple refused to bake a cake for a lesbian couple's wedding and so Oregon ordered them to pay the lesbian couple $150,000.

You may be outraged, but I am not. It is not because I am insensitive, although I am. It is because that's what happens after the activists win the war: they start to bully, as in “Our Loud, Proud Left.”

When you organize to fight an injustice, you mobilize as for war. You recruit activist soldiers, you devise strategy; you train the troops and you go out and fight battles in the public square to force the unjust ruling class to stop their cruel and unjust oppression.

But what happens after you win the war? Do you go home to Mount Vernon and send the troops home to their farms?  Not at all, for activism is all you know. You find new battles for your troops to fight, new ways to force the ruling class to bend to your will, and so you make the turn from fighting against injustice to fighting for injustice.

Last week The New Republic ran an article by Peter Moskowitz full of outrage at Illinois GOP governor Bruce Rauner's executive order (!) that “will prevent public-sector unions in the state from collecting mandatory dues from employees who choose to decline union membership” just like the half-educated Scott Walker in Wisconsin. It's all a cunning plan to deny funds to the Democratic Party and gin up support among conservatives.

What Moskowitz does not tell us is that these are government worker unions, that government workers make up to 40 percent more than private sector workers, and that government worker pensions are pushing states (especially Illinois) to bankruptcy.

The problem is that special privileges for labor unions that seemed, 150 years ago, a “good thing” to enlightened people, are now driving state and local governments to bankruptcy.

At what point did labor unions transform themselves from underprivileged workers protesting and marching for justice and become the current corrupt special interest preying on voters and taxpayers – and helpless politicians?

We see this everywhere. Fifty years ago, civil rights was a noble cause, to extend to the descendants of slaves the same rights as everyone else; but now it's a racket, a game of quotas and shakedowns and name-calling. Forty years ago well-born women protested and marched for the right to equal pay and high-flying careers; now they are just bullying people because they got the power. Forty years ago gays wanted the right to come out of the closet and stop hiding their sexuality. Now they are using their political power to change the marriage laws and bully small businesses because they got the power.

Of course they do. All they know is organizing to force the government to bend to their will. And government is just the name for things we do together by force.

But enough about liberals; I'm sick of them. Either we the people will rise up and organize to smash liberal power and its injustice or we will snivel away the future tugging our forelocks, Igors mumbling “Yes, Master” as we go to our “voluntary” indoctrination classes.

My question is: What about us? Suppose we conservatives win the political future and with it the power to reform the welfare state? What I want to know is: what are we doing right now to limit our power once we get the keys to the kingdom?

For me, there is no glory, no honor in persuading the American people to make a change and then using our power to humiliate the liberals the way that liberals instinctively dishonor and humiliate anyone that disagrees with them.

So what is to be done?  Perhaps not much.

Perhaps we can start with the fact that US conservatives have this curious doctrine about limited government. We think it is a good idea. And the smaller the footprint of government the less chance for it to step on someone.  There is the fact that we believe in a “leave me alone” society where people don't use government to order other people around, and instead practice responsible individualism.

And there is the fact that many conservatives revere Winston Churchill, who advised “in victory, magnanimity.”

We conservatives can do better than liberal injustice. And we must.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.