The Hippie Report Card

How far have we come in the last five or six decades? Not very. But there are lessons to be learned.

Peace, love, flower power. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Turn on, tune in, drop out.

There was so much more to the era of the late 1960s and early 1970s than those stereotypes. Underlying those buzz phrases was an idealism, a tacitly agreed upon set of aspirations that a good percentage of a generation championed.

There’s a lot of criticism of that generation these days, most of which falls into the category of shortcomings. Some of that criticism may be justified. But there are still a lot of lessons to be learned from the groundswell of social and political activism that seemed to come about organically, as a response to what young people witnessed and experienced.

A new version of political activism arose in the anti-war movement, in the civil rights movement, in the women's rights movements, in the environmental movement, and in the then-nascent gay rights movement. The common thread in all that activism was a challenge to a stagnant status quo, side by side with a sincere belief …