If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 55 years, it’s that liberals are relentless and will win through sheer persistence if conservatives abandon the fight.

The incoming U.S. government stands poised to forever alter the balance between governmental power and individual liberties and to replace the free market economy with socialist planning.

And what do we hear from many conservatives? That we should be encouraged that President-elect Obama has announced certain key centrist appointees and that we should convince ourselves this means he will not pursue the agenda he plainly tells us he will pursue. Savvy liberals must be laughing themselves silly.

Pro-life forces have made inroads into the collective consciousness and against the abominable practice of abortion, and they’ve been gratified by the appointments of two strict constructionist justices in Roberts and Alito. That said, Americans have just elected the most life-hostile president in our history, who got a complete pass on social issues during the campaign and who might be in a position to appoint three or more liberal activist judges.

But what are many conservatives saying? That Republicans got trounced because of the Christian right’s uncompromising positions on social issues. That analysis doesn’t square in theory (the majority of Americans are not pro-choice) or in reality (social issues were on the backburner in the national election, and social conservatism triumphed in state ballot initiatives, even in the liberal California).

Liberal secularists tell us Christians are insinuating themselves into government and thereby are threatening our liberties by intruding on the sacred prohibition against church-state interaction. They say our liberty tradition is grounded in secularism.

The depth of their historical and constitutional misapprehensions are only exceeded by the blindness today on both sides of the ideological spectrum as to what is actually going on in this area. Secularists continue virtually unchecked in their indefatigable quest to purge Christianity from the public square.

Those who accused me of hyperbole for arguing in my book “Persecution” that secular liberals are waging war against Christianity should look at what’s going in our nation’s “godless” Capitol Visitor Center and in state capitols throughout the land. Many secular activists openly admit their hostility to Christianity; they find it offensive and intolerable. The New Atheists blame it – and other religions – for most of the evils and violence in history and the present. All the while, secularists insist on imposing their worldview into the policy mix. And the response from many “enlightened conservatives” is that we need to keep our faith in the closet.

This same feckless conservative response has occurred with the war on terror, including Iraq. Largely because of the poll-ignoring statesmanship of President Bush, we have not suffered a major terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11 and have almost consummated our victory in Iraq. Yet conservatives can’t wait to join the liberal narrative that President Bush made a mess of the whole thing. I’d hate to see what our fair-weather friends would have said if we’d sustained additional terrorist attacks at home and lost in Iraq.

Those of us who keep fighting against the unyielding liberal tide are not motivated by partisanship or blind ideology but a commitment to preserving America’s freedom tradition. If we give up the fight because we lack the stomach for political warfare or swallow the seductive lie that “getting along” is more important than fighting for principles, the demise of the nation is all but a foregone conclusion.

With the financial meltdown and other factors, a perfect storm has developed for Obama to bring his socialist shock and awe to this country, and we’re told not only that we can’t complain but also that we must rejoice along with him.

Call me stubborn, but all the so-called centrist Cabinet appointments in the world don’t diminish the jolt of Obama’s statement on “Meet the Press” that “if our entire economic policy is premised on the notion that greed is good and ‘what’s in it for me?’ it turns out that that’s not good for anybody.”

Don’t get hung up on the words “socialist” or “Marxist” now. Just understand that a man who views our current system as “greedy” because an already heavily progressive income- and estate-tax system doesn’t sufficiently punish “the wealthy” is no friend of capitalism or of the American dream. A man who so readily demonizes the human desire to pursue one’s financial self-interest is setting the table for radical structural changes to our system.

If Obama’s words here or to Joe the Plumber don’t concern you, then maybe you’ll grasp the gravity of the situation when he inaugurates socialized medicine and resurrects the failed and depression-exacerbating Keynesian pump-priming economic model to launch his $1 trillion new New Deal.

What then? Are we supposed to soothe ourselves against these possibly irreversible steps by contemplating Obama’s long-forgotten “centrist” appointments or with some 1984-ish chant affirming our harmonious bliss as we kiss our traditions goodbye?

No, thank you.