A watchman keeps guard over a building at night, to protect it from fire, vandals, or thieves. Thomas is a believer that certain values and principles never change and has critiqued misbehavior and wrong-headedness by people on his side from the start. If values and Truth mean anything, Thomas says, they must be applied equally. Hypocrisy and heresy cannot be ignored no matter the source. In the book, Thomas does not stigmatize labels, such as conservative and religious, because Thomas says: It allows people to define me and others by their perception of those labels. Ask me a question and I will give you my answer. For over fifty years in journalism, Thomas has offered incisive, humorous and often corrective commentary to our social, political, and religious conversations. An early commitment to addressing publicly what he sees has marked Thomas entire career. Cal has always called both parties, both sides of the American political divide, to account, to take the high road and to honor our civic and religious ideals with compatible behavior to the very best of our ability. This increasingly radical approach to public life has won him many friends on both sides of the political aisle, hundreds of thousands of faithful readers of his columns, and a continuous barrage of accolades and hate mail, much of it charming when it is not too foul to repeat.
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