In an emotional keynote address to the WND "Taking America Back" conference in Miami, Adm. Jeremiah Denton, the former U.S. senator from Alabama and Vietnam war POW held in captivity for almost eight years, called for the United States to return to an openly declared belief in God.
"America is great because America is good," he told the attendees, insisting America will remain good only if American leaders return to following God's law.
"The patriots who founded this nation drew their faith from the Bible, even if that's not the way President Obama likes to talk about it," he said.
"Our enemy is us," he said, borrowing a phrase from Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo, "when the president and progressives who control Congress urge us to discard God as the source of our rights as citizens and we start passing laws that violate God's law."
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Denton insisted that belief in God was key to the success America has enjoyed as a nation.
He said the United States must never abandon the belief in God that the Founding Fathers openly expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
"Every demagogue in history has refused to believe that man is endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he noted, encouraging the conference attendees to remain resolute in their determination not let the U.S. be betrayed by Barack Obama or by a Democratic Congress that believes rights and liberties derive from Washington, D.C.
Jeremiah Denton after his return to the U.S. in 1973 |
Denton said the root cause of dishonesty in government and business was America's abandonment of God and God's law.
"We are spitting in God's face as a nation" by allowing sex industries to expand in America and refusing to acknowledge the sanctity of marriage as defined by God as a union between a man and a woman, he said.
"In prison, I survived by the infinite mercy of God," he said, explaining that only his faith in God and his belief in the United States got him through his captivity as a POW in Vietnam.
"The principles of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution will persist as long as we are willing to do something about it," Denton said, expressing his confidence the American people "are about to do something about it" – a comment that appeared to reference the upcoming November mid-term elections.
Denton gained fame in 1966, when during a forced interrogation as a POW in Vietnam he blinked his eyes in Morse code to spell out the word "torture," confirming for the first time to military superiors in the United States that his Vietnamese captors were torturing him and his fellow POWs.
See the ABC News report with video of Denton's 1966 "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" interview, as well as his stirring comments upon touching down back in America after nearly 8 years in captivity:
After retiring from the Navy, Denton worked as a consultant to Christian Broadcast Network founder Pat Robertson, a position he held until he ran for the U.S. Senate from Alabama in 1980.
After being released from captivity in Vietnam on Feb. 12, 1973, Denton was awarded the Navy Cross, the highest medal that can be awarded by the U.S. Department of Navy and, after the Medal of Honor, the second highest award for valor awarded by the United States government.