-By Warner Todd Huston
UPDATE: My son helped set up a GoFundMe campaign to help get another used car to replace the one destroyed.
Over the course of this year someone in my neighborhood has targeted me. At first I thought it was just random vandals as the attacks were penny-ante nonsense, but now I am pretty sure it is being done by someone who knows I am a conservative writer who has a body of work stretching back to 2001 and they are trying to intimidate me.
It started early this year when a flag was pulled off my flag staff and left ripped and in pieces on my lawn.
I replaced the flag imagining it was just local punks acting tough. Weeks later that new flag disappeared.
That’s twice.
Then my garage door was egged.
That is three times.
Still, it was all small-ball stuff and I thought it could just be punks who don’t have any underlying reason to attack me on a personal level.
But then something more specific occurred. On the night of July 1, the U.S. Army flag that I fly in honor of my son who is in the service was scorched and on it was written in marker “die dogs.”
This was a bit more threatening and more specific than just mindless destruction. It seemed directly aimed at the U.S. military and me personally.
That incident added up to four times vandals struck my home. I made a police report after the flag burning just to be on the safe side.
Next, on September 24 another incident was perpetrated against my property, and this one had a specific message, too. Over night someone egged my garage door again but this time they also wrote “racist” on one of the metal panels.
Naturally, as a conservative writer, I write on subjects such as Islam and immigration. they are topics that would goad most liberals to call me such a name. I also have frequently had political yard signs in my yard for the more conservative candidates in my area. So, my home is well known (or at least easily known) as a place where a conservative Republican lives.
As to my writing, I’ve never tried to hide where I live nor written under kitschy Internet names. I have always written under my full, real name. It probably isn’t too hard for someone to find me if they are serious enough about doing so.
At this point, with those two bits of graffiti I began to wonder, is someone was targeting me because of what I do for a living? So, I made a second police report after the garage door incident.
Thus far none of these incidents were really too major but they did show signs of coming faster and picking up in severity.
As an aside, I have no troubles with my immediate neighbors. In fact, our neighbors across the street had been on an extended visit to Mexico for the last several months and the neighbors right behind us just moved in and weren’t even here for much of this vandalism. The other neighbors are two elderly neighbors and a recently arrived middle eastern family I haven’t even really met. I have had no cross words with any of them.
But last night it went into high gear.
At about 1 AM or so on Saturday morning, I was awakened by a noise outside my home. I can’t really say what the noise was as it woke me from a deep sleep. It was just a shout that awoke me. I looked at my window and saw what struck me as a strange light outside. So, I went to the front door…
And saw my car interior on fire…
The surface of my passenger seat was set aflame and the entire interior of the car destroyed. Fortunately it isn’t a new car (it’s a 1999 Oldsmobile 88). But unfortunately, because it is so old I never put it on comprehensive coverage leaving it only at liability coverage. So, insurance won’t cover this destruction and I am now without a car.
Naturally the police became involved, but they say they won’t classify it as arson because they don’t have any evidence to show for it. A plastic pop bottle and cap was left inside by who ever did this. It smelled of gas to me.
Police wondered if I smoked in the car. I don’t smoke cigarettes and only occasionally smoke a cigar but NEVER in a car. If you’ve ever smoked a cigar you know that doing so in a car is a messy, ashy endeavor. I don’t do it. So, there is nothing that should have set my car on fire 7 hours after I last drove it. Also, it was the surface of the seats that went up in flames. Nothing electrical any where near the burn zone.
I firmly believe that this is an attack on me because of my writing.
This is the tolerant left in action. They are trying to intimidate me.
I will not be silenced.
UPDATE Oct. 19
Here is the first try at putting up a surveillance camera. This one looks over the area of most past activity. I plan to put more up soon. But I just wanted all you folks to see that I am making an attempt to begin trying to do what I can to put a stop to this. And as of October 19, no further attacks have occurred.
UPDATE Nov. 19
Over a month out and no repeat trouble since my car was burned. Maybe my camera and warning signs made them think twice, or maybe the car burning was their “brave” big finish. Either way, fingers crossed, no more trouble… which is a good thing.
Let me thank all those on the Internet who posted about this incident. Thanks in no order to Da Tech Guy, RightWingNews, Jeff Dunetz, CanadaFreePress, TruthRevolt, Onan Cocoa at Constitution.com, PJMedia, GraniteGrok, Illinois Review and a host of others.
But, I’d also like to say that this vandalism also shows how the media is sold out to the left. If I were a liberal blogger who had my car lit afire, my story would have been all over the media. I’d have been on every network TV show and I bet tens of thousands of dollars would have been raised to help me recover from the attack. But I am a conservative, so that means I got no coverage from the media.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, YoungConservatives.com, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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