America is a free country where you can build whatever you want — but not anywhere. That’s why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn’t meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics.

Since there are churches, chapels and synagogues across the street from or within a few blocks of Ground Zero, there clearly isn’t a zoning issue with houses of worship in that general area. The above passage only makes sense to me if he’s advocating some sort of new zoning laws that only target a single religion. And how exactly would he challenge Park51 on aesthetic grounds? The proposed architecture is a typical rectangular building with an energy-saving translucent glass facade. Unless the point of including that sentence was a sop to the more uninformed and reactionary parts of his readership that assume there will be giant minarets or something.