“Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

I hadn’t seen the full quote, but Williams really should know alot better than this. In a day and age when people are tarnishing mosques with bacon, it is slipping into bigotry to identify one group with engaging in terror.

What policy conclusions should we reach from his premise? That any woman wearing a hijab or man with a long beard should be detained without habeas corpus? Given recent events, I have adjusted the way I think about and approach the issue of Muslims in the United States considerably. It’s perplexing that Williams has regressed.