Phone Call Of The Day

Today on KTRS/St. Louis, I was taking calls about the ongoing New York mosque controversy and espousing my opinion that the developers have the right to build whatever they want on that site, and should not back down. It's not that I care about putting up yet another religious edifice, but as a civil libertarian, I'll happily argue in favor of constitutionally guaranteed rights for Americans of any persuasion.

Callers were split on the issue, but far too many of them were simply uninformed because they've bought into lies being spewed and promulgated on multiple media outlets and websites. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts."

Coming out of a commercial break with only a few minutes left in the hour, I looked up at the call screen and saw that a woman named Michelle wanted to comment, and that she was a Muslim. I thought this might offer an interesting perspective, but things got twisted almost immediately when she opened her mouth and declared herself a "militant Muslim."

She kind of glossed over that description, but I wasn't going to let it go that easily, so I questioned her about what she meant. From then on, it didn't go the way she thought it would. I asked her some simple questions and gave her enough rope to hang herself, which she proceeded to do, at one point comparing her group to the...well, just listen...

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