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.
A false understanding of human nature and of history leads to policies which are not only unjust but are also practical disasters.
Progressivism is vicious. I'm currently browsing through
Christian Smith, The Secular Revolution, University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles, 2003. It's a collection of essays by sociologists describing the rise of Progressivism. Archbishop Chaput mentioned it in an article in First Things. It's remarkable. It describes the way not just Christianity but theism as a determinative principle of philosophy and ethics was driven from among the leaders and shapers of culture.
I'm 8 years older than you (but fabulously immature.) My impression was that at home, at school, and at church (where Sunday school was taught by well-meaning but incompetent layfolk) Progressive secularism dominated. There was no depth to moral discourse. My mother, born in 1920 in London, studied economics with Keynes (! -- mom was hardcore), and was part of the Christian Socialist phenomenon, though the US in the 50's was not a safe place for the articulation of such thoughts. My father, born 1904, had no religion nor saw any need for it until something happened in his 50s. He was very private about it, and I have no idea of his thinking.
And THAT little fact is important. The idea of a father as a guide to "formation" in morals and religion just hadn't crossed his mind. To me that suggests a secular and utilitarian idea of parenthood.
So I think the hippies should be viewed not only in the context of other US naively utopian movements but as an inchoate response to the empty religiosity and shallow ethics of a culture which thought the Lord of all to be a private and emotional matter.