November 13, 2000
As is somewhat well-known, I carried no
brief for Texas Governor George W. Bush or the Republican Party this year. Indeed, I
made my break from the Republican Party on the national level in 1996, and I am
never returning. It is my firm conviction that the only way the multifaceted and
interrelated problems facing our society can be ameliorated is by doing in our own
day the slow, tedious work undertaken by the Apostles nearly two millennia ago to
plant the seeds for a Christ-centered world. Christendom, which flourished in
Europe for nearly a thousand years, was the result of the efforts of those who took
seriously the Great Commissioning given by our Lord to the Apostles before He
Ascended to the Father’s right hand in glory. The missionaries who came to
the New World five hundred years ago were intent on doing here in this
hemisphere the same sort of assiduous work that had produced the glory of
Christendom in Europe. For it is only a world living in the shadow of the Cross and
recognizing the authority of the true Church on matters of fundamental justice that
has a ghost of a chance of fostering justice within individual nations and peace
across international borders.
Pope Leo XIII noted in Sapientiae
Christianae that a Catholic’s love of his nation must be premised
upon his love for the Church. For just as love of our fellow creatures may become a
mere expression of sentimentality rather than of willing the salvation of their
immortal souls, so is it the case that love of one’s country can be reduced to
merely sentimental and naturalistic terms. A disordered patriotism becomes a form
of idolatry in which a particular nation’s mythology becomes more important
than even the true faith. Pope Leo put it this way:
Now, if the natural law enjoins
us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which
we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his
native land, very much more is it the urgent duty of Christians to be ever quickened
by like feelings towards the Church. For the Church is the holy city of the living
God, born of God Himself, and by Him built up and established. Upon this Earth
indeed she accomplishes her pilgrimage, but by instructing and guiding men, she
summons them to eternal happiness. We are bound, then, to love dearly the
country whence we have received the means of enjoyment this mortal life affords,
but we have a much more urgent obligation to love, with ardent love, the Church
to which we owe the life of the soul, a life that will endure forever. For fitting it is to
prefer the good of the soul to the well-being of the body, inasmuch as duties toward
God are of a far more hallowed character than those toward men.
Thus, it is not possible to truly love our
country unless we first of all love the Church our Lord created upon the Rock of
Peter, the Pope. There is no secular, nondenominational, religiously indifferentist,
or culturally pluralistic way in which to resolve social problems. As I have noted on
many other occasions, individual souls need the life of sanctifying grace in order to
grow in virtue and sanctity over the course of their lives. So is it also the case that
societies need the guidance of Holy Mother Church in order to pursue authentic
justice founded in the splendor of Truth Incarnate.
There is no salvation in electoral politics.
None whatsoever. Electoral politics in this country merely provides us with a
forum where we can challenge our fellow citizens with truths that may be difficult
for them to accept. But we do have the obligation to speak the truth in love as a
means of planting the seeds that might result in the conversion of hearts and souls
to the true faith and help those who are already Catholic to see the world more
clearly through the eyes of faith. It is only when we begin to view the world clearly
through the eyes of the true faith that the events of this passing world come into
clear focus.
The narrowness of the election
The very narrowness of the 2000 presidential
election speaks volumes about the fruit of the fallacious nature of this
country’s founding. Bad ideas lead to bad consequences. The idea that it is
possible for men of differing beliefs to pursue the common good without reference
to the authority of the Catholic Church as the ultimate arbiter of the natural law is
false. Ironically, that idea is what is common to the Calvinists who landed at
Plymouth Rock and the Freemasons of the lodges of the eighteenth century. As
Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, religious indifferentism leads
to the triumph of atheism in every aspect of a nation’s life. And a country
that relies upon a written document as the sole basis of governmental legitimacy
and the propriety of public policy will travel all too naturally down the path of social
chaos, expedited by the forces of positivism and deconstructionism. That is why the
United States of America is so divided at present.
It is divided into many different camps.
Essentially, however, it is afflicted by those who have been catechized and
evangelized by the spirit of religious indifferentism, cultural pluralism, legal
positivism, moral relativism, and the whole gamut of statist policies into believing
that we are the masters of our own destiny. The majoritarianism of John Locke and
the “general will” of Jean-Jacques Rousseau have created an atmosphere
in which the average person has come to believe that morality is determined at the
ballot box or by those who serve in the institutions of civil governance. The very
people who reject uncritically even the possibility of the infallibility of the Successor
of Saint Peter accept with total faith whatever it is the scions of our popular culture
propose to be preached by the ethos of political correctness. The very people who say
they do not believe in creedal religion accept secularism as the civil religion of our
day, coming to resent anyone and everyone who dares to speak in denominational
terms. Thus, the promoters of contraception and abortion and sodomy and state
control of education and all manner of statist and redistributionist programs are
seen as the defenders of truth. Those who represent any threat to that state of things,
no matter how shallow or insincere the threat may be, are seen as enemies of the
people.
That is what accounts for the fact that Albert
Arnold Gore Jr. won the national popular vote on Tuesday, November 7. Indeed, he
would have won the presidency outright in the Electoral College (the allegedly
disputed popular votes in Florida notwithstanding) had Ralph Nader not been in
the race as the Green Party’s presidential nominee. Gore’s national total
would have eclipsed Texas Governor George W. Bush’s by more than a
million votes, at least. This is a far different nation than it was in 1980 when former
California Governor Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter. Millions of
young people have grown up knowing nothing other than legalized baby-killing
and a veritable panoply of state-sponsored and administered goodies. Those young
people, many of whom are living as the barbarians of yore, are voting. And they are
not voting for anyone who appears to be a threat to the lifestyle they have been
convinced that they have the right and moral duty to pursue and to uphold.
Added to that mix is the fact that many
Catholics continue to support the pro-abortion Democratic Party most reflexively.
Viewing the Church as an illegitimate interloper in matters of public policy and
electoral politics, many Catholics see nothing wrong with voting for candidates who
promote the mystical destruction of our Lord in the womb under cover of law. They
incant all manner of slogans designed to put an end to rational thought. Permitting
sentimentality and emotion to triumph over rational thought and the truths of the
Holy Faith, such Catholics are frequently reaffirmed in their attachment to a
pro-abortion political party by their pastors, men who themselves are at war with
the Church, both doctrinally and liturgically. It is a matter of great urgency for all
believing Catholics, both priests and laity alike, to catechize those people, which is
one of the principal reasons I wrote Christ in the Voting Booth, a
book that I continue to believe can be of service in helping pro-abortion Catholics
understand the faith and act in concert with the truths our Lord revealed to the
Apostles and entrusted through them to the care of His Church under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately, however, a great many pro-life
Catholics also suspend rational thought in order to place their trust in electoral
politics. Rejecting the belief that the faith can be used in our civil discourse, those
good people believe that in the voting booth they must prefer anyone who is said to
be a “lesser evil” than some other candidate, while eschewing all
candidates of conscience as actual obstacles to the advancement of the culture of life.
What they fail to realize is that their misplaced (and constantly betrayed) trust in
careerist politicians continues to retard — not advance — the very goals
they think can be promoted by their belief in so-called pragmatism and
incrementalism. Moreover, whenever someone presents facts showing how bad a
particular candidate they support actually is, they respond with statements of
unjustified “faith” that the candidate will change over the course of
time (and for the better), all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Indeed, many
pro-life voters simply scoffed at Bush’s firm pro-abortion record in public life.
They are unwilling to accept the fact that a person who supports even one abortion
as a matter of principle is not pro-life and therefore should not be called a
“pro-life” politician. That permits a certain mythology to triumph
— the mythology crafted to advance the career of professional politicians who
believe that we exist to enable them to win office. Such pols will say just enough
during campaigns to convince voters who fear the evil more than they love the
good to stay in the Republican camp, and if elected they will do just enough on the
margin to demonstrate their bona fides. And just as pro-abortion Catholics are
enabled by pastors who are of a like mind politically, many good pro-life Catholics
are enabled in their reflexive attachment to the Republican Party by priests who
believe that the current embodiment of “electability” will carry the day
at the polls and will do at least a few things to promote the culture of life.
Pragmatism and incrementalism have
produced disastrous results for the cause of fundamental justice founded in truth.
Weak candidates who do not understand the life issue (Bob Dole, George W. Bush)
are certified as electable. Candidates who do understand the issue — and who
can articulate it eloquently (Patrick Buchanan, Howard Phillips, Alan Keyes, Gary
Bauer) — never receive the backing of the establishment pro-life community.
Nor do they win the backing of certain priests who trade on their reputations as
spiritual guides to lead Catholics who do not regularly follow the details of politics
into accepting what is represented as received truth from the hand of God Himself.
Like lemmings, pro-life Catholics unhesitatingly follow the advice they are given by
the pro-abortion National Right to Life Committee and by Father Frank Pavone,
who has bought into the committee’s political agenda. Candidates of
conscience are viewed with disdain as the instrumentalities by which the
supposedly “greater evil” might be elected (by draining votes away from
the “lesser evil”), not as the means by which truth itself might be given
a forum in the realm of electoral politics — and not as the means by which the
voiceless unborn might be given voice in the course of public policy debate.
Although the realities of our current political
structure militate against the viability of third parties, those who run as candidates
of conscience nevertheless do help keep the life issue alive. They do not succumb to
the pressures of political expediency. Such candidates understand that they will be
opposed vigorously by those who worship at the altar of pragmatism, which never
brings the practical political “success” that it is supposed to produce. And
professional politicians do read the results of elections quite closely. The extent to
which voters support third parties is a barometer that pols can use to measure how
far they can drift in one direction or another; a significant shift of voter support to a
third party tells establishment pols that they’d better respond in some way.
Those who contend that votes do not carry a symbolic weight are very much
mistaken. They do. And while it remains my belief that the current political
structure is closed to the sort of “electoral success” promised us by the
pragmatists and incrementalists, we nevertheless must be tireless in raising our
voices as Catholics in the realm of civil discourse, no matter how much opprobrium
we bring upon our heads as a result.
Right on the money
The political analysis I have been providing
over the course of the past few years in Christ or Chaos has proven to
be right on the money. I expressed my doubt that George W. Bush could win the
White House, in light of his intellectual shallowness and in light of the cultural
factors facing our nation described earlier in this essay. As noted, Bush lost the
popular vote, a loss that would have been exponentially greater had Nader not been
in the race.
Furthermore, I indicated in the most recent
issue of Christ or Chaos that certain states — New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont — were bound to fall into the Gore
camp. Although I believed a vote of conscience was always the right vote to cast as a
matter of principle, people in those states had a veritable “free throw” to
cast for Buchanan or Phillips. We elect the president through the Electoral College;
the national popular vote total is irrelevant. What matters is the popular vote total
in the individual states. Anyone who knows anything about practical politics
— and it’s amazing to me how unrealistic the so-called pragmatists
actually are when they make their supposedly clever judgments about how to vote
in particular elections — knows that the states listed above have tended toward
the Democratic Party in national elections. The same people who used national
polling data to browbeat supporters of Buchanan and Phillips into voting for Bush
simply refused to believe the
state-by-state polling data that showed Bush the sure loser in the ten states
I’ve listed.
To wit, Mrs. Joanne McOsker, president of
Catholics for Life in Rhode Island, came under fierce attack by an auxiliary bishop of
the Diocese of Providence, as well as by priests, for her steadfastness in support of
Buchanan. Mrs. McOsker was called all manner of names and was denounced as a
person who was helping to elect Al Gore. How is a person in a state certain to be
won by Gore helping to elect Gore by voting for Buchanan? Indeed, Gore won
Rhode Island by a ratio of 58 percent to 37 percent. He won my home state of New
York 60 percent to 36 percent. Yet pro-lifers would not believe Right to Life Party
Chairman Kenneth Diem when he told them what the results would be. They
wanted to be on the “winning side.” They dismissed Father Paul
Driscoll’s brilliant pamphlet outlining the rationale for casting a vote of
conscience, not even bothering to read it. Those who attacked Mrs. McOsker and
Ken Diem were wrong. Imagine what a message could have been sent if pro-life
voters voted for a genuine pro-life candidate in a state that was very safe for the
pro-abort Albert Arnold Gore.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, which
maintains that the November 7 election should have been Gore’s to win as a
result of the vibrant economy, Bush should have won it handily. If Bush had
understood the prophetic nature of the life issue, for example, he could have
hammered Gore for his support of baby-killing-on-demand under cover of law as a
constitutional right. Careerist politicians believe that the life issue is a losing issue.
(That’s the subject of my analysis of the Hillary Clinton-Rick Lazio U.S.
Senate race in New York.) Because that is so, you see, there has never been a
candidate for president from a major party who made the life issue the centerpiece
of his campaign, including Reagan. Gore was given a free pass on the issue of
abortion, especially when it came to the issue of RU-486, the French abortion pill,
when it was raised during the first Bush-Gore debate on October 3 in Boston.
Gore was also vulnerable for being a complete
and total pathological liar. However, a full-scale frontal assault on Gore’s
character was never mounted. It is arguably the case that many voters would have
found such an assault too offensive. Still others would have had no problem with
Gore’s repeated lies, to say nothing of his demagoguery. After all, Bill Clinton
remains very popular, and those who have indemnified Clinton for his behavior
are prone to do the same with Gore. Nevertheless, Bush could have tried to make it
a central theme of his campaign. He did not, speaking only in general terms about
character and trust without reminding people consistently of the specifics of the
Clinton-Gore record.
Very importantly, though, Bush’s
adoption of his “compassionate conservatism” slogan yielded ground to
Gore on the existence and growth of the statist, redistributionist, and collectivist
policies that have helped to create a culture of dependency in this country. That is
nothing new, obviously. Congressional Republicans talked big about their
“Contract with America” in 1994. However, all Clinton had to do in 1995
was to blame them for the “government shutdown” he manufactured,
and Republicans in Congress caved like the proverbial house of cards. The
meltdown has become so bad over the years that on October 25, in a budget
agreement with Clinton, congressional Republicans restored American funding of
“family planning” agencies to kill babies overseas. While talking about
less government out of one side of his mouth, Bush talked the statist game out of
the other, appealing to the culture of dependency. Ironically but naturally enough,
the statist part of his pitch rang hollow with statists. Why should voters support a
“compassionate conservative” when they could have a real, full-blown
Democrat?
Although more competent than the ever
hapless and mercurial Dole, Bush is not a serious man of the mind. Anyone who
can say that the issue of baby-killing is a matter of “opinion” (something
he would never say about racism or anti-Semitism) betrays a terrible lack of depth as
a thinker. Anyone who does not see the inconsistency in saying that he will
welcome every child (a phrase trumpeted by the National Right to Life Committee)
while supporting the destruction of certain children in certain cases is bereft of a
solid philosophical core. A man who claims he would be powerless to reverse an
administrative decision by an agency of the executive branch he seeks to head
demonstrates a woeful ignorance of the powers of the office to which he aspires.
And a person who campaigns actively with pro-abortion politicians (New Jersey
Governor Christine Todd Whitman, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Colin Powell, and New York Governor George Pataki) tells us that he simply cannot
be taken seriously as a defender of life. Could you imagine George W. Bush
campaigning with someone who supported racism, for example? But those who
support the slicing and dicing of little babies are qualified to hold office and are held
up as veritable role models for young people who desire a career in politics
themselves.
Thus, there were few things more irksome in
the final days of the campaign than listening to well-meaning pro-life Catholics tell
me how they were going to vote for “life.” A vote for Bush was not a
vote for life. It was an understandable vote to keep Al Gore out of the White House.
However, as will be demonstrated in the next section of this essay, a Bush
administration would do next to nothing to advance the culture of life. For those
who campaign with caution to get elected will govern with caution to get re-elected,
and that’s even more the case this year given the fact that even if Bush turns
out to have won Florida’s twenty-five electoral votes and manages to take
office, he still will have lost the popular vote.
The practical results of the 2000 elections
Here is what we can expect if George W. Bush
is sworn in as the forty-third president of the United States on January 20, 2001:
1) Bush will appoint pro-aborts throughout his
administration, starting with the pro-abortion, pro-contraception Colin Powell as
his secretary of state. Powell will be in charge of population policy. And you can be
sure that Powell, a firm supporter of the United Nations program of population
control, will pursue policies almost identical to Clinton’s on matters of
“population and development.”
2) Pro-aborts will populate the Bush White
House. To be sure, we will see a smattering of pro-lifers in certain positions. The
various constituency groups must be thrown a few crumbs, after all. However, most
of the Bush White House will be populated by very pragmatic careerists who
consider their service in the White House to be a reward for their years of service to
Bush personally and/or to the Republican Party generally.
3) Forget about the Supreme Court and the
other courts in the federal judiciary. Bush will be very careful to nominate only
those candidates who he believes are “confirmable” (a variation of
“electable,” eh?). That is, the last thing in the world a President George
W. Bush will want is for Roe v. Wade to be overturned during his first
term. He does not want to give Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his likely
opponent in 2004 — her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding —
or some other Democrat that particular issue with which to defeat him for
reelection. Thus, Bush will nominate “moderates” in the mold of
Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter. It is even possible that he might
elevate one of the pro-aborts he appointed to the Texas State Supreme Court.
For in addition to wanting to avoid a reversal
of Roe during his first term, Bush will point to the fact that there is no
longer a “pro-life” majority in the Senate. There are five fully
pro-abortion Republican senators (Susan Collins and Olympia Snow of Maine,
Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Kay Bailey
Hutchison of Texas) who could bolt Bush on a judicial nominee if that nominee
were deemed to be a threat to Roe. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska could be
thrown into that mix as well, although it is unlikely he would bolt from Bush on
one of his appointments.
Additionally, there are the vacancies that
occur from time to time in the twelve Circuit Courts of Appeal and the eighty-eight
U.S. District Courts. Bush will appoint a variety of individuals to fill those
vacancies, including pro-aborts, all of whom will be dutifully confirmed by
supposedly pro-life senators, yes, the very same people who confirmed almost all of
Clinton’s pro-abortion judicial nominees. Bush will play the judicial card
very, very cautiously.
4) Partial-birth abortion? Even the needlessly
conditional ban that has been thrice passed by Congress (and vetoed by Clinton)
might be in some jeopardy in the next Congress. However, as I have demonstrated
repeatedly, that issue is moot and symbolic. It is unlikely that the Supreme Court
would sustain such a bill. And even if it did, the bill’s life-of-the-mother
exception would still make it possible for the procedure to be used. Moreover, there
are two other methods of killing a child in the later stages of pregnancy that would
remain perfectly legal: hysterotomy, and dilatation and evacuation. If the court
struck down the bill (and look for Antonin Scalia to join in such a decision,
claiming that the issue was a matter for the states to decide), Bush would shrug his
shoulders, express his regrets, and say, “Well, I tried.”
5) Reversal of RU-486 and the so-called
Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Bill? Not on the Bush radar screen at all.
6) Look for establishment pro-life leaders
(National Right to Life Committee and its state affiliates) to indemnify Bush at
every turn. Excuses will be made for his judicial nominees. Those who dare to
criticize Bush will be called impatient and ungrateful. The specter of Hillary
Rodham Clinton will be raised at every possible turn to convince pro-lifers that they
will just have to live with silence and relative inaction on the life issue given the
political realities of an evenly divided Senate, a narrowly controlled House, and the
fact that Bush is a president who won the electoral vote while losing the national
popular vote. We’ll be told that we’ll just have to wait until the
congressional elections of 2002 or the 2004 presidential election. And if Bush is
reelected we’ll then be told that over the horizon is looming some other
Democratic Party monster who must be slain by another Republican savior.
If Bush loses to Gore, look for careerist
Republicans to blame his loss on the life issue. Never mind the fact that Bush
buried the issue. It will bring closer the day when a totally pro-abortion candidate is
nominated by the Republican Party. And you had better believe that the National
Right to Life Committee, which supported the candidacy of the pro-abortion Rick
Lazio, would support such a candidate as being preferable to the
“greater” of the two evils in the major political parties. Establishment
pro-life figures, including Father Pavone, will never break with the two-party
system.
As we know, there is no salvation in partisan
politics. But what Father Pavone fails to understand is that a completely acceptable
pro-life candidate has not been nominated by the Republican Party because the
pro-life establishment has made consistently bad pragmatic choices as to which
candidates to support during the caucus and primary processes. Dole was a disaster
in 1996. As noted earlier, Bush was a very weak candidate. He stood a chance to win
only because there was a residue of hostility among some voters toward the
Clinton-Gore era. Father Pavone and others simply do not believe that a man of
truth can be elected in this country. They are wrong. It might be difficult. Our efforts
might not meet with success the first time around. However, it is time to stop
backing flawed candidates who want our votes while they bury the life issue in the
campaign and, once elected, take just enough marginal action to keep us on their
electoral reservation.
In 1996 Buchanan was wrong, in my
estimation, in failing to go over to the then-U.S. Taxpayers Party of Howard Phillips:
a substantial number of people would have followed him, thereby building up a
base of supporters and revenue which he could have used this year to mount a very
credible third-party effort without having to resort to the use of federal matching
funds. Similarly, I believe that Father Pavone and others are wrong to place their
trust time and time again in our failed and flawed two-party system. Millions of
good Catholics would follow them if they broke away.
Again, we might not be successful politically
for a long time. But we would be able to get the truth out there in the forum of
electoral politics, thereby helping, by means of the graces won for us by the shedding
of our Lord’s Most Precious Blood on Calvary, to create an electoral climate
conducive to the success which is now so elusive precisely because of the
wrong-headed pragmatic decisions that have been made by so-called pro-life leaders.
That could do more in the long run to help Catholicize the country — the
necessary precondition for stopping the advance of contraception and abortion and
sex-instruction and sodomy and euthanasia — than any laws that can be
enacted by Congress at present.
Our trust must be in the true faith, not in the
American belief that there is some religiously indifferentist and culturally
pluralistic way to ameliorate the evils that we face in our land. There is so much
fear in the world today. Good, pro-life Catholics fear the election of Al Gore without
remembering that God is more powerful than Al Gore. Good, pro-life Catholics fear
the invocation of the Holy Name in civil debate, something that Pope Pius XI wrote
in Quas Primas was a matter of particular urgency. Candidates fear
being defeated if they stand on principle. Fear, fear, fear.
The Apostles would have stayed in the Upper
Room in Jerusalem even after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them on
Pentecost Sunday if they had been gripped by the sort of fear that grips Catholics in
the United States today. Missionaries would never have gone to far-distant lands to
attempt to convert barbaric peoples to the Cross of Christ if they had been paralyzed
by the sort of fear that paralyzes what should be our Catholic instincts to speak and
to act authentically as Catholics, as Pope Leo XIII urged us to do in Sapientiae
Christianiae. Martyrs would never have offered their lives as a witness to
the faith if they had loved bodily life and human respect more than they had loved
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Holy Father has urged us to “be not
afraid.” Indeed, be not afraid. We should not be afraid of making a break from
the lies of the Americanist ethos. We should not be afraid of exhibiting the courage
of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who believed that enrollment in the Knights of the
Immaculata would help to propagate a Christ-centered world in which the
naturalists would be converted by the triumph of our Lady’s Immaculate
Heart. We should not be afraid to exhibit the courage of Blessed Miguel Augustin
Pro, who cried out “Viva Cristo Rey!” as the Masonic revolutionaries
were about to execute him in Mexico City on November 23, 1927. We must believe
that our Lord wants to use us to plant the seeds for the conversion of this nation to
His own Social Kingship, the only sure antidote to the poisons that are infecting
every aspect of our national life.
With a firm reliance upon our Lady’s
loving maternal intercession, let us understand that the more we believe in false
ideas, the more we will be disillusioned by a flawed political process. The more we
enable the lesser of two evils, the greater the dose will become of the so-called lesser
evil with each passing election. May we ask our Lady to be so consecrated to her
Immaculate Heart that we will never shrink from believing in the miracle of a
Catholic America, one in which all hearts are in total communion with hers —
and with the Heart of all Hearts that was formed out of her Immaculate Heart, the
Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us —
and pray for the United States of America.
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