History Mysteries: What did you remember about the Hippies in the 60s? How did you view them?

[Gerald Cline]

Not everyone in the "counterculture" was a "hippie." Real hippies tended to be more extreme idealists than they typical college kid who identified with the movement. Not all antiwar activists were "hippies" either. Most of the college kids at least paid lip-service to the hippie's ideals. In a lot of respects the "hippies" were used by Marxist and political extremists as a front for their agenda of revolution. The "hippies" wanted social change, the far-left extremists wanted to overthrow society and take it over. Most of the kids in the "youth movement" were a lot less idealistic and more conservative. But they (both the real hippies and the run-of-the-mill college student wannabes) allowed themselves to be led by the extremists.