Honest opinion about government from Irving Kristol:
The distribution of income under capitalism is an expression of the general belief that it is better for society to be shaped by the interplay of people's free opinions and free preferences than by the enforcement of any one set of values by government.
But there have always been many people in this world who do not believe that liberty is the most important political value. These people are sincere dogmatists. They believe they know the truth about a good society; they believe they possess the true definition of distributive justice; and they inevitably wish to see society shaped in the image of these true beliefs. Sometimes they have prized religious truth more than liberty (e.g., the Marxist philosophy); and sometimes they have prized equality more than liberty. It is this last point of view that is especially popular in some circles–mainly academic circles–in the United States today.
Two Cheers for Capitalism, 1978
A former Trotskyist who later co-founded Encounter, an anti-Communist journal, Irving Kristol is editor of the journal The Public Interest and an influential columnist whose most notable book is Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978). Like other neo-Conservatives, Kristol is a former liberal who has come to criticize Great Society liberalism.
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.