Trapped in Truculence
The purpose of putting down hippies by both conservative and liberal pundits is to undermine the values of conservation, cooperation and reciprocity. If hippies are against war, then peace is bad. If hippies are against profit, then cooperatives, community clinics and credit unions are bad. If hippies are against nuclear power, then alternative energies are bad. Hippie values existed before hippie lifestyles, and they — not fads — are what the culture war is all about.
If we’re battling against fraudulent values and inauthentic ways of life, then it’s best to attack them directly. Since yuppie values are explicitly anti-democratic, that would seem a more valid target than hippies who succumbed to a yuppie lifestyle. Authentic hippies made important contributions to our society; adding to the mainstream confusion and prejudice on the topic does no one any good.
Using an analogous situation might be helpful.
When New Agers began usurping traditional trappings, rituals and ceremonies of indigenous peoples, liberal pundits began berating aboriginal spirituality as unworthy of respect. As the intellectual property of tribal peoples, such things as shamanism were wrongly appropriated and misused, but deriding the cosmologies of original nations was equally wrong.
The same might be said when progressives excoriate Christianity as a whole, when many Christians play vital roles in fighting the same evils we seek to eviscerate.
