Posted on 09/26/2015 6:14:45 AM PDT by dontreadthis
he hippie movement, if indeed it can be called a movement, confronts the curious observer as a strange paradox. On the One hand, it is generally held to be part of the New Left, itself a vague conglomerate of youthful and not so youthful malcontents, pronouncing the most frightful imprecations upon our society and culture, and threatening the most ferocious assaults upon things as they are. On the other hand, these hippies appear to be so harmless, so peaceful, so utterly absorbed in love and bongo. Where do they fit into the picture of the New Left? Who are the hippies, what are they? Most emphatically, they are not to be identified with the old-line beatniks, with whom they may have some tenuous historical connection. They do not have the truculence, the menacing air, the ideological ferocity of the old-line beatnik; they do not congregate in foul dens in the slums. They are the “gentle people,” sun worshipers, love-mystics. No, they are not beatniks; but what are they?
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
The gene pool of useful idiots now destroying the country.
I think we were right only in this. Peace requires inner transformation; no “system” can provide it. In just about everything else we were as wrong as can be.
It was interesting. Though some of the interests, styles, and lingo lasted, my opinion at the time was that the Hippies phenomenon was done by 1969 or 70 and even beginning to fade by the end of 67. It budded in 1965 and blossomed in 67, and faded fast.
I think it failed because most people want to do something, even if it's just make fancy candles to sell at Woodstock.
For my part, by the autumn of 67 I had come to believe that man's imperfections were serious and that he was not perfectible and certainly not by trying to be gentle, generous, and happy.
So I thought of the effort as a kind of naive flash in the pan. But it was too obviously impossible, as the waiting rooms of the STD clinics and the reliance on the generosity of people who actually had jobs made clear.
I think these things happen over and over again in history.
So there's that, anyway....
I remember those days well. Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll! Tun in, Turn on, Drop out!
The ones I remember were counter-culture. Anything that could be considered “Middle Class” was railed against. Their biggest target was MARRIAGE and family life! “Outdated! Old hat! Unnecessary”. If you loved someone you just shacked up with them! After all, the marriage license was “only a piece of paper”!
Now those old Hippies and their children consider marriage the most important thing two people can engage in, but ONLY if you are GAY!
A fact about the original Hippies that is seldom mentioned is that they were great believers in personal filth. That is, they often abhorred bathing, to the point where they could be smelled downwind from a block away. Even those attending university could horribly pollute classrooms with their stench.
And, by the latter part of the 1960s, they created such an explosion of venereal diseases that the public health authorities had to begin a multimedia advertising campaign against VD.
What began with the “love beads” Hippies, espousing idealistic claptrap, evolved into disgusting and violent chaos by the time of the Altamont Free Concert in 1969.
Importantly, in most of the US, Hippies were rare, preferring to flock to the coasts to spread their grossness. But middle American teenagers absorbed some of their fashion sense in little ways, and were much cleaner than the bona fides.
The unnerving nature of the military draft, and how it was unfairly and disturbingly applied, did much to create the Hippies, as did the first great burst of leftism in the universities, and the very limited mass media, basically just three TV networks and newspapers.
The flip side to this was the abject boredom found in the newly built midwestern and western cities and suburbs. Because there were so very few recreations, and yet there were inexpensive musical instruments, garage bands proliferated. And though there were a vast number of these, the competition forced a lot of creativity in music.
There is a website that streams recordings of a lot of “also ran” music from the time. While not good enough to make the big time, it was enough to be played on the radio, at least in regional markets.
http://www.beyondthebeatgeneration.com/
I remember despising them back when this article was written. I haven’t changed my mind. They wanted a life without responsibility or demands - all pleasure, no work. Some died, most outgrew it, and the rest went into either education or government.
The natural check on improvident behavior is the need to earn a living. What has changed the equation in recent decades is a welfare state that will feed, house, and medicate the shiftless with no questions asked. There is less here than meets the eye; when society goes into the business of subsidizing irresponsibility and self-destructive behaviors, we will get more irresponsibility and self-destructive behaviors.
The link between the hippie lifestyle and its various derivatives and leftist politics is twofold: the lifestyle degenerates reject all traditional moral and social codes that impose disciplines, which dovetails with the deconstructionist agenda of the left, and the improvident naturally want an ever more expansive welfare state, since they have no intention of actually earning their own way.
the “silver pony-tails” as Breitbart called them
If you can remember the sixties then YOU WERE NOT THERE. ;^)
like, bump for later, man.
Many hippies ..me included, moved to the right ..some died off early some are simply brain dead
the yippies looked like hippies, but they were the origin of the new left
Boom!
Yes. A Catholic professor, Danforth fellow, formerly active in conservative California politics, worked with Ward Connerly ... was the guy I hitchiked across the country with in April and August of 1967.
Many became religious and joined real or quasi- monastic communities, Christian and Buddhist. One, already an electronic whiz kid, ended up as a sound engineer for some serious recording studios and became an EE professor at a respectable univeristy.
I, as is obvious, just continued on my merry, irresponsible way ....
My thoughts exactly, but intelligently expressed.
Yep.
I was a 16 year old McGovern-supporting hippie-wannabe in 1972 (bra-less is a good look for many 18-20 year old chicks). By 1976 I was voting for Gerald Ford in my first presidential election (and only because RR didn’t get the nomination).
David Horowitz is another significant example of someone who grew up.
I was a redneck hippie, late 60’s early 70’s. The chicks were a lot of fun back then, they didn’t swear or hardly argue. Especially after a bottle of Boone’s Farm or Spanada and a few doobies. Many good times at rock festivals.
But the hippies. I vaguely remember those days. I was born in the early 1960s so missed most of that scene. By the time I came of age, most of those hippies were becoming yuppies.
I do remember back in the 1970s a group of shiftless, smelly people that used to hang out by the convenience store with their dungaree jackets, smoking those funny cigarettes with their long hair and all those beads. My father used to tell me that these were hippies and that if I ever turned out like them, that he would beat me senseless and toss me out of the house.
It was always black and white with my father. No gray area. But I turned out okay.
LOL! Yup. The ones that said don’t trust anybody over 30 are well over 30 and a lot of them, even ones who were on the fbi most wanted list at some point, have attained positions of power. Guess what they found out. Power GOOD and the money that goes with it too. I avoided becoming one by joining the Navy in ‘67. :>} Doesn’t mean I didn’t grow my hair out once I got out but never embraced the “lifestyle”. Thankfully. But, I still know a lot of them and also a lot of wannabe hippies. 50 years later.
They went from promoting freedom of expression and loving every individual regardless of who or what they were; to stripping everyone of their individuality, deviding everyone into classes, some of which they deemed special rights, others deemed hate groups that could be prosecuted for hate speech if they dare exercise their freedom of expression.
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