EDITOR,

I’ve been refraining from joining the ongoing spitting contest of late (particularly at MantecaBulletin.com) because it seems that a lot of people are just rhetorically beating up on one another more than debating factually verifiable positions.

Let’s face it: It’s getting far too late to waste time with juvenile bickering. As my father always said, “Never talk religion or politics, because people have already made up their mind.” 

It’s frequently not a matter of right or wrong, or even so much as differing opinions, as it is deeply personal, gut-wrenching feelings or intuition — all the blathering in the world can’t change this.

Politically, America and its cherished Constitution seem to be on the brink of extinction. If this administration is annihilated, our great nation will never be the same again. If we fail to strike, America as we have known it since the first constitutional convention is finished.

It’s a classic quandary. As many brilliant thinkers have predicted, this democracy is about to commit suicide because it can’t get its own way. Compromise has been the single great American tradition that has kept us united and strong, but that seems to have gone by the boards.

The Bill of Rights is arguably the greatest human rights document of all time, which has mandated that we have God-given rights no government can grant or has the right to take away — the very stuff of American greatness that has at least inspired and often saved the entire world is coded in this divinely inspired document. Yet there are too many selfish, spoiled, ill-bred, poorly educated imbeciles who would pull apart vital time-honored planks based merely on ephemeral ideology known currently as political correctness.

This nation has been preparing a global system since World War II, but like the only other empire to ever rule the world, we are destroying ourselves from within. 

Freedom is a potent drug that must be used responsibly. If not, the consequences can be dire. 

Nevertheless, salvation is individual. Those who know the savior have no worries — those who do not still have time to come to the only person ever to have fulfilled prophecy by not only making the claim of being God but also the only person to have proved it by performing inimitable miracles and finally rising from the dead .

We have eternity if we’ll accept it. We have a life preserver to rely on as the battered hull of our grand old ship of state is scuttled by a band of self-serving brigands.

Steven J. Catalano, Manteca