Honest opinion about government from Jeane Kirkpatrick:
The fact is that government cannot produce equality, and any serious effort to do so can destroy liberty and other social goods.
[B]ecause regulation uses the coercive power of government to alter outcomes, it diminishes individual liberty: people are persuaded by the threat of sanctions to act differently than they would otherwise prefer.
Dictatorships and Double Standards, 1982
A former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and syndicated columnist, Jeane Kirkpatrick is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985) and the author of such books as Political Woman (1974), Dictatorships and Double Standards (1982), The Reagan Phenomenon (1982), and The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State (1990).
Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.