Dear Editor: My first stab at a response to Nat Harwell's Sunday column ("Fixing America") was a point-by-point rebuttal to his analysis of what's wrong with America - as if that's something of which we need to hear more - and how it should be fixed. I tried and I tried, but the task simply overwhelmed me to the point of feeling faint. How could one writer be so wrong, ill-informed and out of touch in so many ways.

My response is, therefore, directed at you, the editor. I would ask you to reconsider the space you give free of charge to someone locked in the 1950s' time warp when Ozzie and Harriett reigned as the epitome of American culture. They are dead and do not plan to return, from all I know. The white majority will be in the minority in this country in the not too distant future. "Minorities" of all colors, races and creeds have become significant factors in the warp and weave of our society. Women have a place at the decision-making table in contrast to the 1950s when they were confined to the kitchen and the boudoir. Indeed, America was simpler at one time than today, so was the world.

Life is nothing if not a series of changes. We cannot stop the clock or turn it back. We do not reach a plateau and refuse to move forward, whatever that forward march brings upon us. Change is not something to be feared, but apparently change is very disturbing to your columnist.

You as editor should provide your readers with columns and commentary that provoke thought, that push our comfort zones, that take into account the changing formula and circumstances with which we must live and contend here in Newton County, the state and the nation. You have readers who've moved far beyond a romance with the 1950s. How many of them weren't even born then? I grew up in those years and cherish them, but they do not define me. That is not when I stopped thinking.