We are Counter-Revolutionaries

Admiral Jeremiah Denton speaks from the heart about his life, his experience of culture shock upon returning to the United States after eight years in captivity in Vietnam, his struggle to help America recover its character, his love for his wife, and his support for Crisis.

The only justification for my standing up here and being singled out among such splendid Americans, is that Deal Hudson probably knows that no one appreciates Crisis magazine more than I do. Thank God that Ralph Mclnerny and Michael Novak had foresight and founded this magazine.

It is honor enough for Jane and me just to be in the same room with everyone who is here at the Crisis Partnership Dinner. To be spoken of by such a man as Lew Lehrman is more a result of your kindness than our desserts.

I shall first say a little more about Jane and then turn to the subject which brings us here—Crisis magazine.

Crisis asked our children to comment about Jane. They said, “People know how great your dad is, but they don’t know your mother.” As the oldest child with whom she has had to contend, I am qualified to offer a quick observation.

Just before I was shot down, Jane gave an engraved anniversary gift to me with these well known words inscribed on it: “With the breath, smiles and tears of all my life.”

I say to you that Jane has given and is still giving the breath, smiles, and tears of all her life to me and to her whole big family. None of her breath, smiles, and tears has been wasted. She gives as unsparingly and as effectively as any woman ever could.

But beyond that, as all who have known her well—and this is from childhood—have always said, “Jane can do anything she sets her mind to, in any field.”

She has done important work in the field of mental health for over twenty-five years. Besides always pleasing her family at table, she authored a widely read gourmet cooking column.

I could tell you a good story set in the turmoil of the late sixties, a story of how well she served, and not without personal danger, the Office of Naval Intelligence. When I learned about it I was proud—but not surprised. I love her.

In other words, she can hold her own in any company, in any undertaking. She is my best, most severe, and most vigilant critic. She has never quite given up on the impossible task of getting me squared away.

I fell in love with Jane at first sight, and that fortuitous inclination has been increasingly confirmed with each passing year.

And that brings us to Crisis magazine. I also fell in love with it at first sight, and that first inclination has been increasingly confirmed with every word we read in it.

As a group—the founders, the staff, their families, the folks who write for it, the Publication Committee, its supporters—you are the finest, and most fun, people I’ve ever met.

The central reason Crisis is so important lies in the immensity of the crisis it addresses and in how well the magazine addresses it.

Many of you were here during the time when the crisis began developing. You could say it started with Adam and Eve, but during the 60s and 70s it began to accelerate.

My introduction to the crisis began with the culture shock I received upon returning home in February, 1973, after departing the states nearly eight years previously.

During my prison experience, my faith in God was replaced by knowledge of the reality of God. I do not have time to go through how four years of solitary confinement, frequent torture, and starvation brought about that realization, and how spectacularly so many prayers were answered. But the process of faith changing to knowledge of His existence and goodness also happened to most of my fellow prisoners. It has happened to so many others who have suffered under different but equivalent encounters with difficulty.

You can have that kind of difficulty as a mother or father trying to raise a family, or as a mother making a great sacrifice trying to deliver a child. You can find the reality of God when you worry about a kid in trouble, and you pray so desperately. So you know there’s nothing unique about finding God’s reality in suffering because you pray, he answers, and you learn.

My culture shock began with a bang while I was riding with Jane into Norfolk from the Naval air station where I had been reunited with her and our children. I had been familiar with downtown Norfolk from 1943 to 1965. It used to look staid and old fashioned, but prosperous. A few houses of ill-repute were sprinkled about in the Navy town, but it was normal enough.

But new to my eyes were block after block of tawdry looking massage parlors. It was about two o’clock in the morning and they were all closed, but the titles were there. There were X-rated movies and sex-oriented shops. I had to ask Jane what “massage parlor” and “X-rated” meant. Over the next few months, I was to absorb the whole picture of how far our country had strayed from its moorings during the time I was gone.

My reaction was exacerbated by the fact that while in prison I had meditated long upon the precise ways America differed from other nations. This enabled me to resist the diametrically opposite system which held me captive. A lot of men did that over there. I had had an education that included international affairs and comparative politics, and I think I put together a pretty good picture, identical to what Mr. Lehrman describes, if not as steeped in learning.

But when I got home, I saw that America was in the process of shedding those very virtues that I had very carefully and specifically studied to decipher. I saw that America was beginning to shed the single, unique, magic formula developed by our founding fathers. Their whole brave experiment rested on the theory that democratic government could work in America because the citizenry fervently believed in God, especially the central social dictum of Jesus Christ: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. That belief would sufficiently constrain its citizenry from unfair self-indulgence—democracy’s fatal poison.

These concerns led me to the Senate. Aided by a wonderful staff, I fought hard. We won a few, lost a few, and a few got rained out. Many of you had the same luck. But the bad trend continues.

The unique thing is that now we are not just into making exceptional mistakes like legalizing slavery or legalizing abortion. Those were exceptional acts which we recognized as different from the norm.

Now we’re into the business of throwing out the norm. Now we are into a phase of deciding whether we are going to cast away the whole founding thesis of America. We must ask ourselves, did we really mean it when we said that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?

The coming presidential elections are not just about how to tax or how to administer welfare. They are about whether we return to our valid founding principle of “one nation under God,” or cross the bridge to the New Age—formally, consciously, and deliberately. That New Age, of course, is the the counterculture of the 60s and 70s.

The crisis is about whether America survives.

The bad news is that now, as Crisis titled a recent article, “We Are the Counterculture.” Possibly a second revolutionary war has taken place, and we lost. But perhaps we haven’t lost quite yet. The greatest hope I have felt for a long time is tonight. We don’t have to worry about the Church. Jesus said that the gates of Hell wouldn’t prevail against it. He didn’t say that about America.

When I see the names of the organizations sponsoring this dinner, when I think of the people I know personally in this room, when I think of the reputations of those I don’t know, and as I look into your faces, I don’t think the gates of Hell can prevail against us either.

Clearly we are the counter-revolutionaries. It’s up to us to restore the concepts of our founding fathers as the core of our governmental system, of our way of life.

The people of Crisis know all this better than I by far. I learned this as soon as I saw my first copy. Many of you in the room pro­duced those first copies.  Many of you in the room produced those first copies.

The magazine’s content is accurately aimed and ideally composed to expose the core of our cultural crisis.

I love the emphasis in Crisis on the statements and encyclicals of John Paul II who understands our problems in the global and eternal context probably better than any person in today’s world. He also understands, appreciates, and was a major factor in winning the Cold War. Sadly, his understanding of these and other subjects is not shared by some of the bishops, which CRISIS also notes very respectfully.

I love the young writers and young supporters of Crisis—young, but smart and inspired.

It’s easy for a guy like me to get inspired in a communist prison. Some guy grabs me by the chest and says: “You will insult your country or we’ll hurt you.” That doesn’t do anything but make you mad.

Then you come home and find out there’s a change. You’re already inspired to do something about it. But you were here, being tempted by the same thing that tempted the rest of the country. Namely, we’re a rich country and we just can’t stand the prosperity. That’s what Christ said about the camel in the eye of the needle. When Lincoln was asked the cause of the Civil War, his answer ended with the words, “We have forgotten God.”

I love the older, experienced writers and supporters who have offered their expertise to Church and country. They have helped make Crisis a key player in the counter-revolution.

If we now really are the minority, the only way to win is by re-establishing the truth in enough people’s minds. That is exactly why Crisis magazine was founded.

The bad guys won’t read it, but people in the middle who have been deceived or confused will read it. We who are convinced but not informed enough will be given the knowledge to be more effective in the struggle.

If we can promote Crisis, and give enough financial support for this great magazine, we will help our country remain worthy of her patriots, worthy of our God, and worthy of our posterity. It is a privilege to be associated with Crisis in this effort.

Author

  • Jeremiah Denton

    Jeremiah Andrew Denton Jr. (born 1924) is a retired United States Navy Rear Admiral and a former United States Senator from the state of Alabama. He spent almost eight years as a Prisoner of War (POW) in North Vietnam and later wrote a book which became a film about those experiences.

tagged as:

Join the Conversation

in our Telegram Chat

Or find us on
Item added to cart.
0 items - $0.00

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Signup to receive new Crisis articles daily

Email subscribe stack
Share to...