The point is, like it or not, the socialist mantra was picked up and carried - knowingly, I will add - by the “Hippie” generation. And despite the fact that yes, millions supported the traditional US value system and went to Vietnam (willingly), a good portion, more than any before, was made up of hippies who hated the US and all it stood for, and they were VOCAL.
I blame Dr. Spock, as the popular catalyst for all this. Never mind he himself being a socialist.
The boomers brought a close to the worst of the gains by the leftists of the previous generations.
The media has created a myth that the teenagers of the 60s and 70s somehow ushered in this new enlightened America. The reality is that they helped bring in Nixon and Reagan, and they largely ended or slowed the suicidal rush to communism that took place from the 1930s to the 1970s here in America.
The fatal blow to America was the 1965 immigration act that the greatest and the silent generations wrote and passed, but almost all of the deadliest legislation was passed by them before the boomers could start getting a foot hold in voting and leadership.
In 1972 the 18 to 29 year old vote which included many boomers went for Nixon by 52%, how has that age group voted recently?
People need to quit thinking of children and teenagers as having done anything of substance at any time, including the late sixties and the seventies, look at what the grownups were doing, they were shaping the nation that they ran, the kids were not.
In 1970 the boomers ranged in ages of age 24 down to age six, they weren’t running the local filling stations, much less the world.