There was a lot of drug use and leftist crapola in Bethel, NY those 3 days that lives on in colleges and other areas that we are still trying to quash. But compare the totality of those days with the carnage at Woodstock 99 and any contemporary gathering of 100,000+ leftists nowadays. Woodstock is not something that was pure deadweight loss.
In a weird sort of way, Woodstock probably says more about the positive morals of the hippies' parents than the mud pie crowd would prefer to acknowledge. Having a quarter of a million people without a lot of food and water etc and virtually no police presence, but yet there were no major crimes reported sounds more like kids remembered the Golden Rule vs sex and drugs and rock and roll. In turn, the fires and riots of Woodstock 99 probably says more about the morals of the GenXers parents (many of whom were Boomers...) than the kids themselves.
My other disagreement is a bit more invloved. Yea, the hippie music generally sucked and didn't stand the test of time. Who wants to hear "Joe Hill" on acoustic guitar anymore? But perhaps THE most memorable performance came from The Who. And what did they do?
-they ran the photographers off the stage,
-Pete Townshed knocked a petulant Abbie Hoffman into the pit in front of the stage with his guitar,
-they put on a pure rock show of power and volume; no peace and love during their set. In fact Townshend said "My 1460s (Doc Martens boots) released me from psychedelia and all the nonsense that went with it."
-God smiled on them with a sunrise at the end of their set.
The Who are playing to sellout stadiums this summer while other vets...not so much. It seems a working class bunch of mods from Sheppard's Bush and their non-nonsense blistering (dare we say...anti-Establishment?) music style resonated better with American culture than acoustic folk songs.