Liberals have regularly associated tradition with constraint. They have spoken of the 'force' of tradition or of the 'despotism' of custom. Locke drew a contrast between those who let themselves be guided by 'traditional customs and the fashion of the country' and those who use their liberty to think for themselves. For John Stuart Mill 'the love of liberty' was antagonistic to 'the sway of Custom'. Tradition and custom are represented by liberals in much the way Machiavelli represented fortuna, as forces which, unless repulsed by independent, free-thinking persons, would inevitably dominate whole societies and epochs. Mill held up China as the warning example. Custom had there become the court of ultimate appeal, the standard of justice, the argument which none could contemplate resisting. Custom had annihilated individuality and with it liberty, along with genuine history. The consequence was 'stationariness'. Unless the modern pressure of opinion was resisted Europe would become another China. The chief interest of the history of mankind, Mill declared, was the contest between custom and the progressive principle. A free society is in liberal terms an open society.
It is striking. therefore, to find that political thinkers who have urged the need in politics to respect customs and traditions have done so out of a concern for freedom. Whereas John Stuart Mill saw in custom a dead hand which imposed uniformity, we discover traditionalist thinkers arguing that it is in tradition that diversity is to be found and that it is through tradition that it is to be protected. The language of custom and tradition is, amongst these writers, replete with words from the libertarian vocabulary—freedom, consent, variety. A free society is in traditionalist terms one in which a people lives according to a distinctive way of life which it has determined for itself. It is a community and, as such, not fully open but, it will be argued, able to maintain a degree of exclusivity in order to uphold its traditions or culture.
(Geraint Parry, "Tradition, Community and Self-Determination," British Journal of Political Science 12 [October 1982]: 399-419, at 399-400 [footnotes omitted])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 