MovieChat Forums > Taking Woodstock (2009) Discussion > Good things about hippies

Good things about hippies

posted 15 years ago by ewfleming-616-650888
4 replies | jump to latest

Grownups weren't nice and fun to kids like they were in this movie. They hated kids when the boys grew their hair long and the girls stopped using hair spray. The grownups then were totally inflexible and mean spirited. If anybody exercised their First Amendment rights they just about got thrown in jail. Girls and females were nothing but baby and homemaking machines. Girls had to wear dresses or skirts to school and in college had to be back in the dorm every night or they got in big time trouble maybe even kicked out of school. The hippies made it OK to protest things like the war in Vietnam. The hippies made it OK for women to have a little bit of sexual freedom and as far as I can tell they are still enjoying it. Guys with long hair are so sexy. The music was GREAT! I mean kids today are wearing Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd T-shirts and my folks said rock and roll would never last. Hippies made it OK for white people to have black friends and get into civil rights. Hippies made it OK for white people to smoke pot.

[–] JR541 15 years ago

2 totally different posts intended to get responses. Lets see which one gets the most.

He's taking the knife out of the Cheese!
Do you think he wants some cheese?

[–] Sylvie17 14 years ago

The times they were a-changin'. :)

[–] Sojaw 14 years ago

Hippies were also largely responsible for the fact that the US military did not use the draft in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, despite the shortage of troops. So, there are a LOT of young people around right now that are alive today and will go on to live long healthy lives because a generation of young people 40 years ago stood up and protested.

I was born far too late to be part of the real 1960s/1970s hippie movement but I'm proud to say that I'm a hippie. We're far from perfect (no group of people is) but I strongly believe that the hippie movement has made this country a much better place. I don't know very many people that would want to go back to the way things were in 1950: segregation, frequent wars with people being drafted, female sexuality treated as taboo, people not allowed to question authority, etc, etc, etc.

I know its cheesy to say this but I think the world would be a much better place if we all got rid of our guns, take all of our clothes off, and start singing some good songs.

[–] edwin-57 12 years ago

You are right, of course, but the flipside is that instead of sending a wide swath of our youth to these wars, we've sent thousands reservists and National Guard members along with a huge number of private "troops" due to outsourcing. Without a draft, not only do people not have a sense of just how many people are participating in the wars, we are also not sending the sons and daughters of the politicians or the wealthy, who are the true constituents. We are also spending huge sums for privatized armies. Why go to a war zone for peanuts if you can make bank? If we still had the draft, everyone over there would be an actual member of the armed services, everyone over here would have family there and we'd have a lot more support to end the wars and indeed, not start them in the first place. Ending the draft was a way to win the battle and lose the war. Just because we don't have a draft doesn't mean that there aren't good American citizens dying in our names.

There is honor in serving your country. There is no honor in sending our troops to wars of choice on trumped up evidence.