Only the candidates themselves will bring change

Your plea for belief in government (Our View, Aug. 3) is entirely misplaced. It may be well to be enthusiastic about one's convictions. However, those convictions reside in the individual himself, and not in a legal mechanism for human control of the social environment.

Prosperity, of itself, is not sufficient to engender a good life, although it certainly helps. The family remains the building block of society on earth, and all the legal accoutrements that proliferate among the legal mechanics do little more than defile family life. The governments in Illinois and elsewhere are incapable of governing the citizens. Governing the citizenry is done by people, hopefully elected officials, who have more than personal and corporate economic prosperity in mind. The officials, not the governmental mechanism, are the problem with our governments, as they have been throughout history.

Most government agents, elected or appointed, are deluged with letters, and most are ignored for obvious reasons. Demanding results from the agents is futile, in the main, because they are normally counseled to do everything possible, and impossible, in a given situation. Every elected official I have ever been aware of functions as he was oriented upon election. Mountains of communiqués from the citizens make little difference following election. Communiqués from the PACs, and other campaign contributors, are more influential and can be shown, as the investigative reporters demonstrate on occasion, to be the plan of political action.

We don't need greater belief in the mechanism of government, but we do need very great faith, belief, trust and attention in the candidates themselves. We know very little about the elected officials' approach to their work, and until we monitor them much more closely, they will remain a mystery!

Joseph Haggin

Arlington Heights