There is a common confusion between Tradition and what is usually called traditionalism.
Traditionalism, as most people practice it, is attachment to the outer forms of the past: old styles, old institutions, old slogans. It is often mixed with ordinary political conservatism. It looks backward and tries to preserve or restore what has already lost its inner life. This version is easy to mock and often deserves the mockery.
True Tradition is different. It is the recognition of principles that remain valid whether or not the surrounding society still honors them. A man can live according to those principles even when every institution around him has become anti-Traditional. The forms may change or disappear. The orientation does not.
You will meet people who wave the flag of the past while living entirely inside modern assumptions. You will also meet people who reject the past completely and still manage to orient themselves vertically. The difference is not in the furniture of their lives. It is in the direction they face. We are not trying to return to a previous century. We are trying to recover a vertical stance that any century can betray.