I'm certain that "liberalism" has no meaning whatsoever now. It's just an empty word, like "fascism", that politicians use to rally their supporters.

The writer of this passage weakened an otherwise good message with this empty and needless use of "liberalism."

I see this was published in a Dallas based newspaper. Ok, I'd like to go build a 20 story cinderblock apartment building called "the proletarian towers" in the middle of a wealthy, republican-leaning Dallas suburb. Hey, I bought the land, I should get to do what I feel like with it, right?

I think you can actually do this in Houston ... where, last I checked, there are no zoning laws ?

I was there in 2002 and there were people running mini mart stores out of their front porches, in a completey residential neighborhood.

It is still very much the case that Houston has no zoning laws. That does not, however, mean that there are no neighborhoods with their own zoning rules, i.e. home/property owners association regulations and other land use restrictions. However, because there are no overall zoning laws, the restrictions only apply to the immediate neighborhoods that have the H/POA.

Every political -ism gets watered down with time, but liberalism not more than anything else. Drawn from the latin word for freedom, it means a belief in free markets and private ownership (after Locke et al). As far as I know only the US has a political discourse so strong on conservatism that anything else sort of gets lumped together.

"Liberal" is used in US politics with the exact opposite meaning.