An act of terrorism in Wichita, Kansas has lead to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. A suspect has been apprehended. Tiller has been a target of anti-abortion rights extremists for being a rare doctor who performs late term abortion in cases where the mother’s life is threatened. Besides obviously taking an extremist to commit murder, it is also an extremist view to deny a woman an abortion when needed to save her life. Such late term abortions, despite all the noise made by the right, are very rare and few doctors perform the procedure.
In addition to the current act of terrorism, Tiller’s clinic has been bombed in the past and he was shot in both arms in 1993.
Before we speak of a war on terror abroad we need to be more concerned with right wing terrorism in this country. Ironically many who support the misguided Bush administration’s war on terror are also responsible for inciting domestic terrorism, such as Bill O’Reilly.
Many on the right share in the extremism of the terrorist who shot Tiller and many are even applauding his action. In case their comments should be taken down, Balloon Juice has archived them. Christian News Wire issued a release saying, “Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue states, ‘George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.'” Other conservatives do realize that “Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing.”
Oh, the irony.
Gee, it wasn’t even all that long ago that on this blog you were discussing the DHS report on right-wing extremism that many of us conservatives believed defined in an overly broad way what constituted an extremist. In fact, I think, we were mocked by our betters on the left for going bananas on a report that “CLEARLY” was describing only the “real extremists”, and furthermore we were accused of “self-identifying with the McVeighs”.
And now you know why we were so upset over that DHS report – because of remarks like yours. You attempt to insinuate that this terrible crime, truly the work of a nutjob, has some broader base of support. And it’s not just support among the extremists that is alleged, but the ‘right wing extremists’. The shooter may have been mentally ill, he may have had a personal (rather than ideological) reason to commit the crime, heck it might not have been motivated by abortion politics at all. But no, Ron Chusid is already convinced: pro-life conservatives are to blame. It is an attempt to spread guilt by dark whispers and it is shameful.
So this is why we went bananas over the DHS report. Because we realize this is how you operate. You see in every crime committed by right-wing extremists the “root cause” of mainstream conservatism fueling the misdeed. You not only think our politics are wrong, but moreover you think our motives are evil; heck, the extremists are just the ones who are honest about it!
I now fully expect that Rush Limbaugh and George Bush will be blamed for this murder.
Nannes,
You have it backwards. The DHS report was valid because right wing terrorism is a very real problem, with this being only one example of it.
The question is whether the broader conservative movement should consider themselves part of the terrorism problem. When the report came out I, along with most commenting, did separate the majority of conservatives from the right wing terrorists. This event shows, as I noted in the post, that many conservatives do oppose terrorism but an alarming number are sympathetic to this type of terrorism.
There is no doubt that pro-life terrorists are to blame–this is hardly not any attempt to spread guilt. I never said anything along the lines of crimes committed by right-wing extremists being the “root cause” of mainstream conservatism, but there is an actual example of a supposedly mainstream conservative encouraging the terrorist mindset. Why must you respond by lying about what is being said as opposed to providing an honest opinion?
“Right wing terrorism” isn’t a problem except to farLeft activists working overtime to discredit anyone on the Right as being a terrorist… including, as Homeland Security Czarina Janet Napolitano tried to do, American military vets returning from honorable service abroad.http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1239817562001.shtm
Of course, if the farLeft was REALLY interested in protecting Americans at home, maybe you shouldn’t have as a poster boy and Obama-best-boyfriend-pal a convicted domestic terrorist duo in the form of Bill Ayres & wife. And then, almost inviting domestic terrorists to act on America’s safety because, just like Bill Ayres & wife, the liberals can promise to get all farLeft domestic terrorists a Presidential pardon if you act because the other liberals were too weak to act and now need to assuage their guilty little dirty collective conscience.
Sorry, sweetie, it isn’t Nannes who has it backwards.
Matt,
You have your facts all wrong. First of all, nobody is trying to discredit people on the right as being terrorists unless they are actually involved in terrorism. Terrorism from the right does exist. Note that the post refers to people on the right who both support such terrorist acts and those who oppose it.
Secondly you are misrepresenting what the Homeland Security report said.
Third, the report was written by a Bush administration appointee, so if you object to it there is no need to start calling Napolitano names. The Department of Homeland Security declassified reports on terrorism from both the left and the right which were written by Bush appointees. For some reason only conservatives have a problem with reports on extremist terrorism.
Finally, Ayers was not a best friend of Obama’s. He had minimal association on him. Ayers has nothing to do with this.
Liberals oppose violence and terrorism from both the far left and right. Why are so many conservatives defending terrorism from the right?
“You attempt to insinuate that this terrible crime, truly the work of a nutjob, has some broader base of support. And it’s not just support among the extremists that is alleged, but the ‘right wing extremists’. The shooter may have been mentally ill, he may have had a personal (rather than ideological) reason to commit the crime, heck it might not have been motivated by abortion politics at all. But no, Ron Chusid is already convinced: pro-life conservatives are to blame.”
I don’t think he ever said that.
It is clear, however, that some pro-life advocates are willing to step outside the law and that natural mechanism of social change that exist in a democracy in order to stop abortion right now.
It’s like assassinating a head of state, a president, because you don’t like their politics. This is an attack on all of us, our type of government, i.e., a limited constitutional representative republic.
However, I do think this is rare. Even Randall Terry’s public position, while personally, to me, is crazy and insane, is still, I think, “legal” speech (however, I’m not a lawyer, so I could be wrong about this):
“”George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.
“Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.”
In any case, whether or not Mr. Terry crossed a legal line here, I have to agree that there was an implication in the post that “Right wing” = “conservatism” and that mainstream conservatism tacitly support this type of behavior, or at least doesn’t care very much because, in their minds, “the guy got what’s coming to him.”
If these were significant mainstream attitudes, we’d be seeing much, Much, MUCH worse social violence than these occasional headline events. We live in a peaceful society because there are legal and effective mechanisms to allow social change, and the vast majority on both the right and left hold civil liberties, the bills of right, as the highest of values despite what they might say in a heated argument.
There’s plenty of so-called “left-wing” terrorist, e.g.,, “Earth First,” but I don’t believe there’s any sort of broad support, tacit or otherwise, for them from the main stream left.
I think it’s very clear to keep means and ends separate.
Most Democrats support global warming initiative and they “care” for the earth. So does “Earth First,” but EF is willing to break the rules. Unless one is prepare to say the the left-wing generally supports “breaking the rules” of civil society to achieve their ends, calling EF a “left-wing” group is really kind of smear against the left-wing, an unfair insinuation against some abstract group to which we can then use as a brickbat against some particular individual who we of as a “member” of that group. That’s clearly unfair.
Same with pro-life terrorists: that’s what they are, and, in the only important way, that’s all they are.
Sure, they, like most conservatives, don’t like abortion, but they part company with mainstream conservatives because pro-life terrorists are willing to “break the rules.”
Again, that’s a very important, in fact, it’s the only critical distinction to have in mind.
On the hand, it makes sense to categorize these extremist groups as either right or left wing, but is that really the best category? The better distinction to make is that there are groups and individuals that operate w/in the bounds of civil society (i.e., the Law) and there are those that don’t.
Those latter groups are and always have been a huge danger to us all — it doesn’t matter if some of their values overlap with ours. It doesn’t matter because they have placed themselves outside the bounds of civil society, they should be chased through the swap, hunted down with shotguns and bloodhound until they’re found, caught or killed, and I’m sure the mainstream left and right, despite their differences, agree on that.
I think calling pre-fixing “right-wing” and “left-wing” onto the word terrorists is a very bad habit we’ve all gotten into.
In the end, there’s no difference between these two categories of groups. There is, however, a huge difference between “them” and “us.”
Yes, the man that assassinated a doctor in church was a terrorist. Yes, he was a right-wing extremist. Yes, there is an active network of conservative right-wing nuts who are cheering this murder. Yes, this is an example of what the DHS report was referring to.
But no, it is not representative of conservatism nor of conservatives in general.
I understand the need to empathize with the motivations of this killer if you are an ardent pro-lifer, as are many conservatives. By the same token, there are a lot of liberals who empathize with left-wing radicals who commit acts of violence for their particular cause.
But that empathy should not be construed as neither approval nor support. I think a lot of people conflate those and assume that just because “I can empathize with why he did that” also means “I think he should have done that”.
No one likes abortions. I understand why the killer did what he did. And if there is a God, his chances of landing in Hell went up astronomically. However, I am pro-choice, and I understand why the doctor did what he did. Late-term abortions are legal only if the life of the mother is at risk, so I can’t fault the doctor for doing what he considered to be the ethical thing when so many other doctors were too intimidated to do the same.
P.S. from my rambling post, I don’t want to leave the impression that Ron deliberately, pre-meditatively, consciously and willfully decided “yeah, I gonna use this incident to smear conservatives.”
My point is that when talking about these terrorists groups, by simply grouping them “right-wing” or “left-wing” categories, the “smear” automatically happens, unless one is very clear to avoid making the smear, and then to do that, you almost have to drop those labels.
Ray,
I don’t know of anyone who is saying that this is representative of conservatives in general. I certainly did not say that.
Christopher,
It isn’t necessary to drop these labels to avoid the smear. I have no problem with people attacking left wing terrorists. I feel no affinity towards them and in no way feel insulted by attacks on left wing terrorists. I find it quite curious that mainstream conservatives have a problem with attacks on right wing terrorists–and even worse that many in the conservative blogosphere are showing sympathy for this act of terrorism.
Rather than avoiding the labels I thought the best way to make it clear that this did not represent the view of all conservatives was simply to link to a conservative who dissented, which I did at the end of the post. Even without this it shouldn’t be difficult to differentiate right wingers who support terrorism from right wingers who do not support terrorism.
@ #5 Chritopher
I totally agree, and yet the law enforcement people really do need to know which groups to go monitor… (please, stop monitoring the Quakers! they’re PACIFISTS!)
In news reports and stuff, we just ought to say “domestic terrorists”
If you write a letter to be sent to ABC and the other news stations, i’ll be glad to sign on.
“I thought the best way to make it clear that this did not represent the view of all conservatives was simply to link to a conservative who dissented, which I did at the end of the post.”
You certainty did do that. But it raises the question: why did you feel a need to do that? To offset something?
Then the question becomes — why is it necessary to use those labels with this issue?
Yes, it’s so natual and easy to make a distincition along that dimension. You’d almost have to ask an expert on human reasoning why we do this.
I suspect the reason is this. Let’s say that I don’t “believe” in abortion (but I’m not willing to say it fits a legal definition of murder, though it is obviously killing something). Let’s say that you want to rally want to protect the planet because the current environmental problems are so bad. You’re not willing to break the rules, but you feel this is a crisis. Just for an example, let’s just say that’s our respective positions.
Now, on some level, it seems a matter of common sense that there’s more of a chance that I could wake up tomorrow with a change of heart and decide to align myself with these “right-wing” terrorists then there is for you to wake up tomorrow with a change of heart and decide to align yourself with these “right-wing” terrorists. Why does seem like there’s more of chance for me to do that than for you? Because there’s more of an overlap of certain values.
I can say the same about you, about there being more of chance that you’ll walk up tomorrow and decide to align yourself with a left-wing terrorist cause then there is for me to walk up tomorrow and align myself with the same cause.
OK — fair enough, and if we could really objectively quantify such probabilities, we might find there really is a quantifiable difference.
But — what are the chances really? Small, very small? If I said, ‘well, Ron, there is a “small” chance” you could become a member of earth first tomorrow because you share some of their values’, would you be offended? What if I said, ‘ok, not a “small” chance, but a “very Very VERY small chance,’ would you feel better? No, you won’t. You would say there’s NO chance of that happening. None. Zip.
Again, it’s a question about making the right distinction. If the really probably of you joining EF is .1 to the 100th power (a super small chance) while the probably of me joining EF is .001 to the 100th power (and even smaller super small chance), is there REALLY some meaning difference between us? Both numbers are vanishing close to zero. Is this a difference I should really worry about? That’s ridiculus, right?
This seems to be the only common sense basis for categorizing terrorist groups as left or right wing, because there’s some non-zero chance that members of a particular wing could be drawning into the ranks of such a group. And the chance IS no-zero and the chance is greater for a right-winger to join a right wing terrorist group then for the right-winger to join a left-wing terrorist group. True enough.
But look at the absolute values and the difference between those values? They’re vanishing close to zero. That being the case, what’s the real point of using these labels? I think they’re a distraction, they bring up a non-issue, and all that happens is you get a post like you did from Matt and Nannes.
“Then the question becomes — why is it necessary to use those labels with this issue?”
The labels are meaningful. There are right wing groups and there are left wing groups which support terrorism. This is why the two reports from Homeland Security (written by a Bush appointee) on the issue separate them out. Each does draw from some of the more extreme elements from left or right (which does not mean that everyone on the extreme left or right either supports terrorism is is prone to being recruited by them).
Nobody is saying that that everyone on the left is a terrorist because there are left wing terrorists or that everyone on the right is a terrorist because there are right wing terrorists. Examination of right wing terrorism is especially pertinent as this has been far more prominent than left wing terrorism in recent years.
The fact that I get responses like those from Matt and Nannes is meaningless. I get a tremendous number of comments from right wingers which distort what is written regardless of the topic. I also sometimes get similar comments from the far left, and I’m sure that conservative blogs receive far more of them. There are lots of nuts floating around the blogosphere and I’m not terribly concerned with their objections.
Of the many things said by pro- and anti-abortion activists in the wake of the October 23, 1998 sniper murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the most striking (to my mind, at any rate) was his eulogization as a man who gave his life for a “woman’s right to choose.” That’s exactly right: He was a man martyred for a freedom that he as a man did not possess. Think about it: Just what is it that a woman aborts? This purportedly complex and multi-faceted question actually has a very simple and precise legal answer: any responsibility to the offspring she conceived. That’s it. Except we might add that a woman retains this right even if she chooses to forgo an abortion. All she has to do is put the child up for adoption — the alternative favored by the so-called “right-to-lifers” — and that’s that. This is the state of affairs that, in the words of constitutional alchemist Laurence Tribe, guarantees “equality for women … the same ability to express human sexuality without the burden of pregnancy and childbirth that has always been, by accident of biology, available to men.” Now I didn’t know that. Neither, I suspect, do most men. What we do know is that there is emphatically no “equality” for men, i.e., no same ability “to express human sexuality” without the inability to escape the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy — which has always been, by no accident of law, available to women. One example: Miss Jones informs Mr. Smith that he has impregnated her. Can he, in Roe v. Wade America, legally respond: “Thanks for the info. In the spirit of reciprocity, I wish to inform you that I hereby exercise my constitutional right to abort all legal responsibility to the offspring I conceived. Have a nice life”?
FULL ARTICLE http://ABCDunlimited.com/ideas/abortion.html
Noticed you had a blog about liberty and I thought you might enjoy this. He is a very powerful speaker!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV6QXt975TM
Wow, go Adam Kokesh!
I tried to play the video but it is not working at the moment.
The article linked to at the end of the post had this to say, an article by Robert George that was posted on Nation Review online:
This is 100% the correct way to look at this situation. 99.99% of those who find abortion immoral find the killing of an abortion doctor immoral.
There is a simple reason why: The ends don’t justify the means. If life has inherent value, then killing is wrong, end of story. The ‘seamless garment’ phrase is used by some to say that we believe in preciousness of all life, from beginning to end. The wrongness of it trumps the utilitarian argument that says taking a life is justified for some other good. The pro-life creed reject applying utilitarianism to pre-born life – the idea that you can kill a preborn human, if you have a good enough reason. Do the ends justify the means? So it is with life overall.
There are exceptions, that might include the rare lawful execution of a criminal via process of law. Some will speak of hypotheticals like Osama Bin Laden or Hitler (ie would you kill them or condemn their killers?) but those men are outside our civil society. As such, we might contemplate a ‘just war’ reason to kill Osama, but Tiller is a member of our society, who, if not convicted of any crime, had rights to live peacable and unmolested, even by those who found his abortions detestable.
More comparable might be: If you met OJ Simpson in an elevator, just had a new handgun you got at a store, and knew OJ to be guilty (but scot-free) killer of Nicole Simpson, would you take the law into your own hands? What about, say, the local Tony Soprano who was dumping bodies in the local creek and getting away with it? “A Time to Kill” or Charles Bronson type vigilante-ism. … or more comparable, a warped type of terrorism akin to the Black Panthers and Bill Ayers-types of the 1960s. Domestic terrorism of a ‘pig’ for a cause. Justified? Certainly not. In all the above cases, the right way is work within the law.
We have an unfortunate situation where our courts have trumped the ability of the people to protect pre-born human beings, with heartbeats, brain function, and fully functioning bodies and minds in the womb; they are not protected in law against procedures which kill them. This roadblock has created a frustrating situation for the prolife movement who for the most part have the patience of Job in dealing with unfair and unjust court rulings that have consigned the unborn to mistreatment. They plod along making minor yet critical changes – parental consent, informed consent, caring for pregnant mothers, sharing/promoting alternatives like adoption, making abortionists live up to the medical standards of real medical care.
The failure to decide this democratically has also created in some cases violent extremists, who see that working within the law and system doesnt ‘work’ to fix the problem and so go outside the law. They take up the false creed of the ‘ends justify the means’.
The offensive statement; “The question is whether the broader conservative movement should consider themselves part of the terrorism problem.” Should be rephrased: “The question is whether people who take up ‘the ends justify the means’ as their guide to political action should consider themselves part of the problem.”
We should perhaps put utilitarianism on trial. Do we not always end up, in the end, undermining our goals by violating a moral code in order to advance it? …
This may include those who justify waterboarding terrorists ‘if it works’
This may include judicial supremacists who justify bending the constitution in order to win their political battles, even using absurd oxymoronic constructs like ‘substantive due process’
This certainly includes those who kill to advance human rights for the unborn
This includes Bill Ayers and his 60s pals who bombed the Pentagon etc.
“We had to destroy this village in order to save it” – said in Vietnam, and done in more wars than one; is not the killer of Tiller engaging in the logic used in war, and condemning him is condemning the ‘logic’ of war as well? The response to this might be that we need to treat civil society and those outside it as different.
The killer may have been many things, but the ONE THING that led him to kill was an understanding that his actions would “work” only if he breaks a moral code. A true pro-lifer would not break that moral code to advance his goals, because its wrong.
And in the end, it is self-defeating:
This is a good point. Slavery was an evil, and it might have persisted longer without the civil war… but who wouldn’t avoid the civil war and its 1 million dead if we could? I’m sure most all would prefer a different way if we could. Who would prefer govt by bullet over our current govt by ballots? Few to none I hope. Our civil society limits our ability to stop certain ills, but the ill of political violence is thereby taken away, and given the 100million killed by nazis and communists in 20th century, that’s no small accomplishment.
So we need to condemn this lawless violence 100%. we also need to remind ourselves of the error of utilitarianism and ‘end-justify-means’ thinking, and work to reduce the *lawful* violence of rampant abortion that continues to dehumanize our society and raises the ongoing specter of cycles of violence.
As a matter of absolute truth (absolute truth does exist, even if we ignore it), one should realize that GOD says the late abortionist is a murder, so people having those feelings are justified. Observe:
And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:–LUKE 1:41, Holy Bible, KJV
For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.–LUKE 1:41, Holy Bible, KJV
Note: It said BABE, not “blob of tissue.” Thus: I understand the concern of people who are upset by comments equating abortion to murder. Jesus and I both hate people being hurt and dying -yes, even ‘bad’, people like this murdering abortionist-however this dude committed a crime, and, legally, what the other guy did, was self-defense or defense of another in God’s court.
While I do not support the killing of the abortionist, his passing certainly has saved lots of lives -young children who live in wombs.
Conclusion: It is God’s business to execute vengeance, not mine, but this does not any more make the abortionist’s actions right than calling a slave a non-person. In both cases (baby inside a womb and Black slave), the person in question *is* a person -even in spite of people trying to define the words differently.
Did murdering Tiller save lives? The types of abortions he performed were in cases where the mother typically wanted the baby but something had gone wrong with the pregnancy. In these cases the mother’s life was in danger by the continuation of the pregnancy and the survival of the fetus after birth was doubtful. As there are very few doctors who do such later term abortions, his murder could wind up costing more lives.
Ron, do you have stats on the reasons for late-term abortions? How many are really where the life of the mother was threatened? How many are for (utterly understandable) cases where the baby was not going to make it anyway (anacephalic, etc.)? How many are, well, other?
The stats vary depending upon the state–obviously states which are less restrictive on late term abortions are more likely to have them done for the “other” reasons.
Kansas requires that to do a late term abortion there must be a second opinion that continuing the pregnancy will lead to “substantial and irreversible harm” to the mother. This frequently means pregnancies where survival of the baby is in question but I don’t know off hand if we have actual numbers where this applies.
Tiller was acquitted on criminal charges based upon the above criteria. His web site is now down but I found another site which had copied a list of diagnoses for the abortions he had performed from his web site. As this is his data second hand we can’t say for certain how many cases these apply to:
Trisomy 21: Down Syndrome
Trisomy 13 & 18: mental retardation, 90 percent of babies born with it die before the age of 1.
Anencephaly: a severe head disorder, occurs when the head end of the neural tube fails to close, absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp. Children with this disorder are born without a forebrain, the largest part of the brain. The remaining brain tissue is often exposed—not covered by bone or skin.
Polycystic Kidney Disease: cysts on the babies kidney. It takes many years for this to cause the kidneys to fail and can be treated with dialysis or kidney transplantation. 600,000 people in the U.S. are living with PKD.
Spina Bifida: the most common permanently disabling birth defect in the U.S. The spine of the baby fails to close, he or she won’t be able to walk. 70,000 people in the U.S. are living with SB.
Hydrocephalus: there is an excessive amount of fluid in the brain. Infants experience vomiting, large head size, sleepiness, irritability, downward deviation of the eyes (”sunsetting”) and seizures. Older children and adults may experience different symptoms such as, headache followed by vomiting, nausea, papilledema (swelling of the optic disk which is part of the optic nerve), blurred or double vision, sunsetting, problems with balance, poor coordination, gait disturbance, urinary incontinence, slowing or loss of developmental progress, lethargy, drowsiness, irritability, or other changes in personality or cognition including memory loss. Hydrocephalus is very treatable.
Potter’s Syndrome: there is a total absence or malformation of infant kidneys. Vast majority of babies die at birth or shortly afterwards.
Lethal Dwarfism: this is very rare. Some symptoms are a large head, wide front fontanel, corneal clouding, closed off ear canals, and very short arms. Nearly half of the babies that have this die before they’re born.
Holoprosencephaly: In most cases, the brain does not divide into lobes, which severely deforms the skull and face. Sometimes the brain is partially or nearly divided, making the symptoms much less severe. In the absolute worst cases, the baby dies in the womb.
Anterior and Posterior Encephalocele: this complication leads to chromosomal anomaly, most common anomaly being Trisomy 18. Patients with an anterior encephalocele have a 100% survival rate, but only 55% in persons with a posterior encephalocele. Encephalocele reduces the chance of live birth to 21%, and only half of those live births survive. Approximately 75% of survivors have a mental deficit. The absence of brain tissue in the herniated sac is the single most favorable prognostic feature for survival.
Non-Immune Hydrops: Excess of extra-cellular fluid in two or more sites without any identifiable circulating antibody to red cell antigens. There are treatments to perform while the baby is still in the womb, however the prognosis is generally very poor with very high peri-natal mortality.
Wayne- I personally accept Bible scriptures as fact. But what happens as a fact in one case isn’t necessarily true in all cases. Balaam’s donkey talked to him on one occasion. I truly believe that occurred but I don’t believe all donkeys talk. Hey, I know this is off the subject, but I just read in Exodus 30:15 New King James Version: “The rich shall give no more and the poor shall give no less than half a shekel…” You have your tithe based on your increase then you have your flat tax. I wonder what the dollar amount of tax people would vote for if all voters had to pay that amount.