Mill Revisited: The Ambiguity Of Everything

For those of who have read-- and swooned at-- On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (perhaps the core document in the Libertarian catechism of which I, for one, am such a devotee) here is something to read and think about: "Thoroughly Modern Mill, A utilitarian who became a liberal--but never understood the limits of reason." The concluding few sentences are, perhaps, enough to get you to read the rest:

Yet Mill . . . never understood that wisdom is deeper and rarer than rational thought. He never understood that the intellect, which flies so easily to its conclusions, relies on something else for its premises. Those conservatives who upheld what Mill called "the despotism of custom" against the "experiments in living" advocated in "On Liberty" were not stupid . . . . They were, on the contrary, aware that freedom and custom are mutually dependent, and that to free oneself from moral norms is to surrender to the state. For only the state can manage the ensuing disaster.

Could this be true? Could it be, as Bork argues, that the more liberty is unconstrained the more likely it is to lead to totalitarianism?

I have to think about this one.