Sully finds this 1994 gem from Rudy Giuliani:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

Update: Ygz notes that this “seemingly creepy” idea has a “distinguished lineage” running back at least to Hegel, an observation that, even for those of us who recognize the Popperian boogieman Hegel as something of a caricature, is not entirely comforting.