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I am sure you are completely correct. However I live in NJ where we had the riots in Newark. I was too young to really remember much about them or anything about SF . I do remember my father swearing it was the commies stirring them up. I know that my family was by no means involved in anything with commie hippies.... My cousins went off to war ....some enlisted, some were drafted, not all made it back. I remember the funerals and it was a bad time for my aunts who lost sons... I do remember the fights over long hair with my brother & father. I do not in anyway support that Hanoi Jane, Sarandon, Sheehan group. But I won't say all the hippies I knew then were bad. Most grew up and became regular people. They didn't live the rest of their lives in the 60's. Where I live we didn't spit on soldiers or do any of that... Although I am sure it happened here too. We were happy to get our boys back home. Had my brother been drafted he would have done his duty and gone, not run away to Canada. That wouldn't have gone over in my father's house at all. I remember the college campus riots and the churches who spoke out against the war too not just hippies. I think back then it was many different people who got tired of the war. I don't compare Iraq to Vietnam. I think its different for many reasons. I think all these people who think we can just pull out of there and there will be peace are crazy. I just won't lump all hippies as commies. I do support this war totally and my husband and I both are in the PGR and have done many rides. I don't judge people by what they did in their youth. I am sure many of them fully regret what they did then today. I would say you saw more then what I saw by far...I was too young and I think I was maybe 10 yrs old in the summer of Woodstock. I just don't think its fair to label anyone who had long hair & went to concerts a hippie and on welfare etc. I think many of those people didn't think about communists. They were too busy with smoking pot and hearing the music. Not everyone that was a hippie stayed one as many here suggest or were bad parents. Thats not rational to my way of thinking. There comes a point when you just have to grow up...or at least most of us do.

You are absolutely correct that many middle class people were protesting the war and calling for an end to it. They just didn't go out in the streets in the numbers that the kids did. Don't let the ignorance about it get to you. Those who think the "hippies" were responsible for our leaving Vietnam either weren't there or have selective memories.

The MSM, aka Walter Cronkite in great part, were the ones who sold the leftist hogwash to the masses. If it hadn't been for their intentional misreporting of the facts and outright deceitful editorializing the number of protesters and anti-war sentiment in general would have been far smaller.

It is a shame that so many are now falling for a similar counter-propaganda about "hippies" ending the Vietnam war when it distracts from the fact that the MSM bears the lion's share of the blame. Quite a shame because they're back at it and they've learned from the past.

Even with the huge numbers of street protesters back then (absolutely dwarfing what's occurring now) our government never would have bowed to their wishes. It took a groundswell of sentiment amongst everyday working Americans to effect war policy and cause us to pull out.

No. They are not all commies. Many were/are just druggies but when the communists or other lefties need a crowd it is easy to round up hippies. Many of the more modern "hippies" don't really qualify for the term, anyway. They are highly political anarchists. Most of the apolitical hippies are only apolitical in their own minds because they will attach themselves to any sort of "protest" against society and government that comes along, especially if someone is passing out drugs.