Glenn Beck & Hippies

[CaughtintheMiddle1990]

I have to admit, my feelings are kind of divided on that whole movement and era...But one thing I don't get is why Glenn Beck, who was only a young kid, not even a teenager, in the '60s, has such a problem with Hippies. He's refered to "Dope Smokin' Hippies" many times throughout the course of both his TV and Radio shows. I honestly don't get the whole culture warrior bent to it. He wasn't really around to experience or understand the Hippie movement.

One of the most bizarre twists on this which Beck did was say that in the Summer of 1969, you were EITHER a fan of the Moon Landing, or you went to Woodstock which had "no morals", "no values". Really? So someone who went to Woodstock HATED the Moon Landing? Or someone who watched the Moon Landing abhorred those who went to Woodstock? And as far as the 'no morals' and 'values' thing with regard to Woodstock..It was a concert. A three day concert which was a very capitalist, entrepreneurial venture on the business end. The Moon Landing was a "Big Government" project which cost billions, yet Beck chastises the capitalist venture created by young entrepreneurs and uplifts the Big Government Moon Landing. Both were great events in their own way, of course.

His whole summation of Woodstock was "America hating mud people having sex." I thought the event was a sort of escape from the violence and chaos of the era--A peaceful event, quite separate from the radicalism and violence of the Weather Underground people and whatnot, yet he tries to tie them all together as one monolithic bloc. I don't think of Woodstock as some radical, anti-American, pro Terrorist event, personally.

And the fact that he refers to "Dope Smokin' Hippies"--in the present--It just feels like in a way he's somehow mentally trapped in 1969. He's even compared the President and the Administration to said Hippies, that the "Dope Smokin', radicals-hippies" took over the government with Obama. Obama was 8 years old in 1969. Beck was 5. I mean he's basically bashing an event, an era and a movement that he was too young to even really grasp on a meaningful level.

I mean not everything about the Hippie movement was about "drugs" and "sex." Sure, some of it was, but it was also very philosophical in nature--Influenced by Nietzche, Ginsberg, etc, and I'd say it even had a spiritual tinge to it. The whole movement has become, in modern memory of it, a cliche, something worthy of mockery, and I don't understand how it did to be quite honest, and Beck revels in these superficial cliches. I do think there was depth to the Hippie movement, and I'm not talking about simply the Anti-War movement, because I think the Hippie ideals and mindset went far beyond that--It was a lifestyle and ideology, not just a reactionary movement opposed to Vietnam. It had been brewing since the 1920s, if not earlier, with the Beatniks and whatnot.

So what's your take on Hippies, Beck, Woodstock and his interpretation of all of it?

[Constitutionally Speaking]

My summation of the 60's and the hippies is that they were an embarrassment to this country.

[CaughtintheMiddle1990]

My summation of the 60's and the hippies is that they were an embarrassment to this country.

Why do you say that? I mean if you mean the really hateful, activist type Hippies--The ones who spit on soldiers and whatnot--I'd agree. But that was a few of them. My dad, for example, was a teenager by the end of the '60s, long hair, you know, the whole bit. And were many like that in his neighborhood. But in his neighborhood, if someone dared spit on a troop, that person would GET THE SHIT BEAT OUT OF THEM not by the soldier, but by members of the community.

Same goes for the flag burnings and whatnot. I think that was a very visible few. I mean most of the youth at that time was Hippie to some degree...And I doubt most of the youth were all that political. I consider the Hippie movement to have been both a political, ideological, cultural, social and aesthetic movement. I don't agree with the political side for the most part, but the cultural and aesthetic parts of it--which persist today--I agree with.

In some ways, in a moral sense, I can understand opposition to the Draft--I feel it's unconstitutional and morally wrong--But in another sense, I do detest the whining over it by many then, especially since there were hundreds of thousand who got their draft cards and went. Which is why my feelings on the era, movement, etc are kind of ambiguous.

[Constitutionally Speaking]

Why do you say that? I mean if you mean the really hateful, activist type Hippies--The ones who spit on soldiers and whatnot--I'd agree. But that was a few of them. My dad, for example, was a teenager by the end of the '60s, long hair, you know, the whole bit. And were many like that in his neighborhood. But in his neighborhood, if someone dared spit on a troop, that person would GET THE SHIT BEAT OUT OF THEM not by the soldier, but by members of the community.

Same goes for the flag burnings and whatnot. I think that was a very visible few. I mean most of the youth at that time was Hippie to some degree...And I doubt most of the youth were all that political. I consider the Hippie movement to have been both a political, ideological, cultural, social and aesthetic movement. I don't agree with the political side for the most part, but the cultural and aesthetic parts of it--which persist today--I agree with.

In some ways, in a moral sense, I can understand opposition to the Draft--I feel it's unconstitutional and morally wrong--But in another sense, I do detest the whining over it by many then, especially since there were hundreds of thousand who got their draft cards and went. Which is why my feelings on the era, movement, etc are kind of ambiguous.

Perhaps I should have limited it to the counter-culture and the values they spread. So many of the problems we have as a nation are the result of these maggots. If not a direct result, the harmful things at least got a huge boost during this time. Drugs, sex without consequences, worship of socialism, lack of civility, America hatred, military disrespect, big government "solutions" to our problems. The whole "edgy is cool attitude" where talent takes a back seat to who can be the most controversial.

[CaughtintheMiddle1990]

My summation of the 60's and the hippies is that they were an embarrassment to this country.

Perhaps I should have limited it to the counter-culture and the values they spread. So many of the problems we have as a nation are the result of these maggots. If not a direct result, the harmful things at least got a huge boost during this time. Drugs, sex without consequences, worship of socialism, lack of civility, America hatred, military disrespect, big government "solutions" to our problems. The whole "edgy is cool attitude" where talent takes a back seat to who can be the most controversial.

Well, I think the drug thing was magnified by them being illegal--Because it becomes that "forbidden fruit" thing. It's human nature. People I knew in HS who did Pot, for example, didn't start doing for any real reason, but because it was edgy and forbidden.
As to the sex without consequences bit, well until AIDs came around, it was a good era for having sex. Let's be honest. I mean AIDs basically crashed the party for straights and gays alike.

I do think the idea of if you get pregnant, just get an abortion, is a grave moral wrong but then again abortion wasn't legalized until the '70s and it wasn't made legal by Hippies but by nine middle aged men sitting on the bench. And abortion is something that's been happening in some form or another for thousands of years.

I'll agree with you on the lack of civility part, but there's little I can do about that. I do address women as "Miss", or "Ma'am", and men above my age as "Sir", but that's just how I was raised.

I don't think the vast majority of Boomers (who were around then) or the Generation X or Generation Y (their kids) really hate America on a large degree. It's concentrated amongst the academics and whatnot from what I've noticed, and that was brewing since the 1930s--Ever since the Frankfurt School ran from Europe and settled at Columbia University in NYC. The Frankfurt School wanted to induce Marxism on a social and educational level, as they felt THIS was the real way to have a Marxist revolution (This idea came about when the Western nations didn't turn to Communism in the wake of WWI. Many Marxists assumed WWI would bring about global communist revolutions, and when it didn't, they had to go about it quiet, subtler).

As to the whole dislike of our military, I've never gotten it, but I do think that was pushed a lot more by the military and ex-military like John Kerry. The Radical Hippies--the radical activist--simply ate up what the media was telling them. Somehow, IMO, the media in the '60s and '70s became Marxist leaning. I don't know how or when that happened.

We've had the idea that "Big Government" can solve everything since the '30s, and remember, the Hippies of the era DESPISED LBJ, who was a Liberal. From what I've read, yes, while some of them stayed far left, it would seem their social stylings and sense of morale--The whole idea of do your own thing--Would be a libertarian trait.

As to the whole idea of "Edgy is cool", I think that's been around for a long, long time. I mean women went to see Clark Gable in droves in "It Happened One Night" simply because he was shirtless in one scene. That turned him into a sex symbol. Or in the '50s, you had Elvis gyrate his hips on TV--Very provocative--and his record sales soared. It's human nature to seek out what's forbidden, what's risque, etc.

I think a lot of today's problems can't be blamed so much on Hippies, or that era, so much as it can be blamed on people who were, and are, in the media, and were and are in the schools. Ever heard of Critical Theory? The Frankfurt School? If not, look up those things and you'll see where a lot of our cultural problems came from. The Social Sciences too.

I love the field of Sociology, because in many ways it is real, and I love to study it but it also--if your teacher is a Marxist type--has the potential to be a powerful tool for indoctrination.

[Wei Wu Wei]

I think this is a good thread and it's always good to see others taking a step back and reevaluating things. This is how you grow and develop. I don't agree with your analysis entirely, but some of it is spot on, imo.

As for your last sentence in your last post, it's a little funny. Marx pretty much invented to field of Social Science. There would be no sociology without Das Kapital.


I submit that you should reconsider some of your preconceptions about Marx.

[Apache]

.But one thing I don't get is why Glenn Beck, who was only a young kid, not even a teenager, in the '60s, has such a problem with Hippies. He's refered to "Dope Smokin' Hippies" many times throughout the course of both his TV and Radio shows. I honestly don't get the whole culture warrior bent to it. He wasn't really around to experience or understand the Hippie movement.

Take Beck's advise, don't believe him, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH...

[Wei Wu Wei]

Take Beck's advise, don't believe him, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH...

Yes.

I think that the best kind of research you can do is talking to people who disagree with you, and reading books by authors with different positions.


Keep in mind though, that sometimes this can work against you. Many people read "opposing ideas" with the sole intention of proving them wrong, as if it is a contest. You have to be willing to accept that you do not know the whole picture, and you are wrong about sometimes. So am I, so is every dumb person or great student or historic thinker. There is no hard and fast right answer.

Many people, when they talk to someone who disagrees with them, only see an Other who threatens their worldview, and because security and a sense of self-consistency is normally a stronger drive than rationality, people will often cling even harder to their old ways of thinking, repeating phrases like slogans in order to maintain their sense of self.


Remember that when you engage the Other, you have to do so openly, accepting that it isn't a contest where one person wins and another loses. You don't lose if you find out you misunderstood something or are wrong about something or simply do not "get" something. That's actually a good thing. Confusion is the first step towards truth because you have to break the idea that you already are right (because no one is). Ideally, both parties will grow closer to truth because truth comes from the friction of opposing ideas, not from fundamentalist ideology worship.

[Gingersnap]

Regardless of whether or not you share Beck's view of hippies, to say that he was "just a little kid" during the era and therefore has no credibility when he complains the counter-culture is just crazy.

There is a whole age cohort nailed to the ass of the Baby Boomers who has always had to deal with the fall-out from Boomer fads and Boomer interests. The Hippie Movement was certainly a Boomer interest. The sexual revolution was also a Boomer interest which was directly influenced by the 'make love - not war' group. That particular group was completely given over to drugs and sex as a lifestyle issue. Read some of the autobiographies of people who promoted hippie values and who lived through the Summer of Love, Woodstock, and other similar Boomer milestones. It really was sex. drugs, and rock 'n' roll.

The social fallout from 60s is something we all live with today. While some important issues gained momentum in the 60s (civil rights comes to mind), the mindless sex, situational ethics, self-worship, and value-free tolerance is directly a product of of the various counter-culture figures of the time. "Hippies" is just a short-cut term to encompass that.

I think Beck and everybody his age or younger have every right to complain about the Boomer idiocy of the 60s if they care to do so. They certainly have the right.