Just a thought about the 60's and the peace movement.....

[Liberal Veteran]

I was born in 65 so I missed the majority of it although my memory is keen enough to remember some of the attitude of the times.

I was just thinking to myself that the most of the so-called hippies and such seemed to have come from the generation that fought in WW2 and it occurred to me that parents of that time must have understood something. Having lived through a war, I wonder if they weren't a bit more permissive and accepting of the ways of the peace movement and counter-culture because they really hoped that they really would be be able to change the world and make it a better place. There is nothing like living through a war to make one appreciate just how important working for peace really is.

[Maple]

1. Well it was called

the 'generation gap' at the time.

[Liberal Veteran]

2. Yes, but I think there was a grudging admiration in that also...

...from the older generation to the new one.

[Maple]

3. Er...well...no

The older generation thot they were all crazy.

[geniph]

14. Good doG, no!

You don't remember hippies getting beaten up for having long hair or antiwar signs? I do. You don't remember people with stickers saying Love It or Leave It? I do. You don't remember people railing about how the country was going to hell in a handbasket because of the flower children? I do.

I was a bit too young to truly be one of the flower children (I was born in 1959), but my elder siblings were, and I well remember the vitriol and anger directed against them. Go watch newsreel footage of Kent State sometime, or other student riots, when cops beat anti-war protesters with nightsticks, gassed them, dragged them off in handcuffs - it was UGLY. At Kent State, they called out the Guard, and besides the 4 who died, there were many other protesters who were shot and injured. Some are in wheelchairs to this day.

[Snow]

16. I was working at as a sub teacher in an Indianapolis high school

the day of Kent State, and a teacher went on this rant in the lounge - the kent state students got what they deserved, he said. I asked him when trespassing, protest, what-have-you had become a capital crime, and he reiterated his position. Strange time, even from Indianapolis...

[ClintonTyree]

4. As one who did live through it.................

no one gave us any lattitude at all. We were looked at as communist vermin. A good analogy is Free Republic. You're aware of the FReepers' attitude toward Democrats. That was the pervasive attitude toward hippies in the 60's. Even our own parent's hated us (some, not all) and at best barely tolerated us because we were their sons and daughters. They certainly didn't understand us. It was a time when people blindly followed the dictates of their government (much like now). We dared to challenge the paradigms they held so dear. All in all, it was the greatest time to be alive, of course I have nothing else to compare it to. We're stuck in whatever place in time we're born into, so make the most of it. The 60's and early 70's were great, I consider myself very fortunate to have lived through that era.

[bearfan454]

12. Yes it was the greatest time ever to be alive.

I was born in 56. I still remember the hippie handshake, the peace, love, dope sayings. I had a peace medallion and a neru shirt. My Dad absolutely would not buy the brown wooden love beads for me. Talk about getting fucked up ? I wanted to go to Woodstock. My parents wouldn't let me.

[Virginian]

5. One of the things I remember

is my Mom saying, "How are they going to explain this to their kids when they ask 'What did you do in the war, Daddy?'?"

After all, that was what their kids were asking the WWII vets.

[CShine]

6. Well, let me be the first to say...........

.......that my dad served in World War II (drafted in 1943, served in New Guinea, the Phillipines, Okinawa, as well as the post-war occupation force in Japan).

He understood NOTHING about the peace/hippie movement of the 60's, and remained a solid Republican till the day he died, including back in the time when being a right-winger wasn't even CLOSE to being fashionable. I became a committed left-winger, and he never understood an ounce of that for his entire life.

If anything, my left-leaning tendencies are NOT a result of any sort of understanding he had about freedom, rather, they are a RESPONSE to his failure to see the truth.

[bowens43]

7. Not in my experience.

The country was VERY divided. Much like today. My parents constantly yelled about the 'stinkin, filthy . un-american hippies' and my grand father took one look at me and said 'No, grandson of mine has long hair' and he didn't speak to me for almost 15 years. Permissive? I don't think so.

[RebelOne]

8. If I remember correctly, since I lived through the '60s

they weren't called hippies, but the Beatnik Generation.

[mrbill]

9. the "beatniks" were from the 50's............

maybe early 60's in middle america.

long live maynard g krebs.

on edit: correct spelling of beatnik

[MaineDem]

10. Weren't they two different groups?

I remember Beatniks in the very early 60s, maybe even the 50s. The hippies were more in the late 60s into the 70s.

That's how I remember it but I lived through the hippie generation so my memories may be just a tad, shall I say, clouded.

[areschild]

11. Yes, Beatniks first; hippies later

eom

[Richardo]

13. Generational: Beatniks were WWII vets; Hippies were the kids of WWII vets.

In general...

[LuLu550]

19. if you remember the 60s

then you didn't "participate" in them.
:hippie: :smoke:
Actually, it was pretty bad being a left-wing type back then. I got tear gassed during the march on Washington. "Old" people hated us and called us un-American...come to think of it, they still hate us and call us un-American...

18. media definitions

A lot of it was media definition. People like Jerry Garcia who is considered a hippie if anyone is actually used to say that he considered himself more of a beat than anything else because that's what got him interested in art in the first place (he actually started off as a painter). And look at someone like Allen Ginsberg or Neal Cassady, another beat but also a hippie also, or someone like Ken Kesey who was between the two generations technically.
Same thing happens these days.
Each generation has these groups of marginalized creatures that get labelled something new, but have much in common with the earlier version. Members of DEVO for example were students at Kent State and knew one of the people who got killed.... DEVO certainly didn't "look" like hippies!
It's in the interests of dominant culture (not exactly a conspiracy) to have people forget their history and historical antecededents.

[Zolok]

15. Not my battles not my wars....

sorry I'm pretty ambivalent about the peace movement...so much of their schtick has been lifted by the far right...except the far right has money with which to magnify their influence a thousand times.

www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

[RandomKoolzip]

20. Just curious....

"sorry I'm pretty ambivalent about the peace movement...so much of their schtick has been lifted by the far right...except the far right has money with which to magnify their influence a thousand times."


Just curious as to exactly what parts of the peace movement's "shtick" the right wing has appropriated.

[DancingBear]

17. Hell, no

The 60's, if you were what was then considered a 'longhair", were a series of pitched battles between "us" and "them". Being born in '53, I remember it well. Nobody outside of your generation had even the faintest understanding of what we were trying to accomplish. These were the beginnings of Nixon's "Silent Majority", and these people were more likely to beat the hell out of you than say hello. There were parts of the country that no "longhair" in his/her right mind would visit (I.e. the deep south, the Montana/Dakota west) for fear of his/her life.

I can still remember the police in Columbus, OH - they wore starched white shirts and spit shined black hip boots. The derogatory name for police back then were "pigs", and they had big signs emblazoned on their cruisers that said "PIG= Pride, Integrity, Guts". Those bastards would scare a corpse.

That said, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Only those of us old enough to have lived through it (and were a part of the counterculture that existed) can understand - I often wish that todays generation can/will find that type of passion.

Go ride the music....

[GalleryGod]

21. The Highlight For Me Was Viet Vets Against the War,1971.

Operation Dewey Canyon III; John Mitchell's Justice Department locked the gates of Arlington Cemetary....local cops were scared shitless in that these "protestors" were experts in small unit tactics.

Passion! Passion! Passion!:grouphug: