Everywhere I look and listen this morning, I hear advice for President-Elect Obama -- appoint this person, appoint that person, you must do health care, you can't afford health care, take advantage of your honeymoon, you won't get a honeymoon.

I'm trying to ignore most of it, and I hope he is, too. One of the reasons I supported Obama and am thrilled about his election is that I've got a lot of faith in his brains, his competence, and his ability to make decisions. Right now I trust him a lot more than I trust most "commentators."

While this election certainly put a stake through the heart of Jim Crow -- and that's emotionally uplifting news in a country that has struggled as much with racism as we have -- we also elected the best person for the job. And given the damage done by policies begun by Ronald Reagan and taken to their extreme conclusion by the worst president ever, the country desperately needed that.

So while I'm sure I won't agree with everything President Obama does -- and that I'll occasionally write him a letter or blog about my opposition -- I don't have any advice for him right now, except maybe for legendary Texas football Coach Darrell Royal's immortal line, "Dance with who brung ya": Go with the people, ideas, and process that won the election.

I do, however, have some advice for us liberals and progressives who are dancing on the grave of the right wing this week: Don't get complacent.

Mike Madden wrote in the Nov. 3 Salon: "Should places like Colorado, and Ohio, and North Carolina and Virginia -- all states with more than their fair share of evangelical Christian conservatives -- go blue on Tuesday, it will be a clear sign that the sun may be setting on the political influence of fundamentalist churches like New Life."

Well, Obama carried all those states and Madden was right about the lack of religious right influence on the 2008 election. But it would be a mistake to assume fundamentalists will fade away.

My father grew up during the time of the Scopes monkey trial. He remembers assuming that the ignorance that opposed teaching evolution -- as if it were a matter of faith like belief in God, as opposed to a matter of scientific evidence -- would fade away as people become more educated.

I recall in high school being given a copy of a proposed speech textbook -- not a science book -- containing an errata sheet that informed us that a mention of evolution would be edited out. I also argued religion on the school bus with fundamentalists. But like my father, I assumed that religion based on ignorance -- as opposed to religion generally -- would fade away.

Fast forward to the present, when statistics show that only about 40 percent of US residents "believe" in evolution. People who don't believe in science are likely to glom onto religious fundamentalism.

Karen Armstrong points out in The Battle for God that religious fundamentalists -- like the rest of us -- don't really believe in magic. But because they do believe in God, they leap to the conclusion that the Bible must be literally true, and they're holding onto that. They are unable to work with the mythical and metaphorical truth of the Bible. (I suspect the same is true among Islamic, Jewish and Hindu fundamentalists, but I grew up with Christians and I understand them better.)

We cannot continue to assume, as my father and I did for so long, that the fundamentalists will fade away. They give people too much comfort in a complicated world. We must continue to make sure science is properly taught and that religion is kept out of the public sphere.

Also on Nov. 3, Thomas Schaller wrote on Salon's War Room that the culture wars were over.

While I wish he were right, I don't think he is. True, draconian anti-abortion measures went down to defeat on Tuesday, but the California proposition banning gay marriage passed, as did other anti-gay legislation.

The culture wars may not have played a huge role in this election, but I suspect that's only because the economy is in the toilet and Bush was the worst president in our history. Don't count on these issues going away of their own accord.

It's not that I don't think we're making progress; it's that I think progress takes a long time and involves a lot of effort. We outlawed slavery in the U.S. in 1863, the Civil War ended in 1865, and constitutional amendments -- including particularly the 14th Amendment -- were passed shortly thereafter ostensibly extending the right to vote and other freedoms to blacks (or at least, to black men).

After that, very little positive happened addressing racism until the 1950s and 1960s, until the Civil Rights Movement, Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, affirmative action, and the other progressive moves. Finally, in 2008, we can elect a black man president, not as a token, but because he is truly the best person for the job.

Women have only had the right to vote in this country for 88 years. The right to birth control dates to the 1960s and the right to abortion to 1973. It's been even less time since gay people could be out and still able to teach school or hold public office -- or even get a promotion at work -- and the fight for gay marriage is still in its early days.

If we sit back and assume the culture wars are over, we'll wake up in a few years and find ourselves sliding back once again, blindsided by the religious right.

If you need more evidence, look at this New York Times piece on Sarah Palin and spiritual warfare.

We must pay attention and keep up the fight.