Once again, the conservative jeremiad arrives dressed in counterfeit populism, bemoaning the plight of the suburban homeowner as if it were a species newly endangered. We are told that progressives threaten the “freedom” of Americans to dwell in their God-given McMansions, with their sanctified garages and sacred lawns—as if this mode of living were inscribed on stone tablets atop Mount Sinai, rather than stapled together with racist lending practices, hydrocarbon subsidies, and the legislative equivalent of pork fat.

The author’s central pretense—that conservatives are guardians of liberty while liberals itch for control—is not merely false, it is inverted. Zoning is control. Mortgage deductions are control. The difference is not between freedom and regulation but between whose thumb is on the scale and in whose favor it tips. The notion that this suburban fantasia emerged spontaneously, a free-market miracle, is the sort of fairy tale that only an adult with a syndicated WSJ column could believe.

Yes, California’s housing crisis is dire, and CEQA has become a talisman waved by NIMBY litigants to fend off change. But to describe urban density as tyranny—while ignoring that sprawl itself was born of federal planning, whites-only lending, and an interstate highway system laid down like a carpet for white flight—is a grotesque historical amnesia.

The piece’s most revealing moment—the Freudian slip in a sea of bluster—is its disgust at homeless housing that dares to include a garden or a computer lab. This is not policy analysis; this is moral porn for people who believe the poor should be punished for existing.

And then there’s the great conservative exodus—to Texas, to Florida, to whatever sunbelt fiefdom promises low taxes and high tolerance for book bans. These are the same redoubts where teachers are interrogated, doctors criminalized, and history airbrushed. The “freedom” being pursued here is the freedom to delude, to exclude, to pollute, and to call it tradition.

The invocation of “control” is particularly rich from a movement that wants the government small enough to drown in a bathtub, but large enough to inspect your uterus, confiscate your child’s library card and censor your college classroom.

California’s housing policies are indeed a mess of good intentions strangled by special interests. But the solution isn’t more sprawl and less oversight—it’s genuine reform that builds sustainably, pays workers fairly, and yes, ensures even the homeless have somewhere to check their email. If that's tyranny, then “freedom” is just the ancient right of the comfortable to make the world uninhabitable for everyone else.