Hippies Demonized in Louisiana Voucher School Textbook

From AlterNet:

Most recently, AmericaBlog discovered a rather cartoonish depiction of one of the largest counter-culture movements in American history printed in a Louisiana voucher textbook. The 8 ^th grade history book, titled America: Land I love, gives this lesson on hippies:

Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles; these youth became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.

Of course, the devil’s influence extends beyond America’s “immoral” youth. Reads another textbook: “It is no wonder that Satan hates the family and has hurled his venom against it in the form of Communism.” 

More here. 

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."  George Orwell, 1984.

As tempting as it is to jump on the anti-hippie bandwagon, and as silly as such a passage appears to be, it is part of a deeply ominous trend in conservative states.  I mean, as a kid, I loved the hippies, all their counter-culture rebellion, all their great music, all their self-proclaimed freedom.  The concept totally dominated the popular culture long after hippies had retreated into their Grateful Dead and Burning Man enclaves.  Eventually, Eric Cartman got to me, though.  Well, him and Chris Hedges.  In the end, the hippies were perfect for consumer culture: despite all the revolutionary trappings, it was a deeply narcissistic and self-involved movement, utterly unwilling to forge alliances with other left-wing movements, completely cock-sure about their beliefs, whatever those beliefs happened to be that day, preachy, pushy, and rude.  It is no surprise in hindsight that the hippies of the 60s in short order became the nihilistic disco-dancers of the Me Decade, and then the yuppies and soccer moms of the 1980s.  The thread uniting all three cultural manifestations was greed and pompous self-importance.  Perfect consumers.

But they weren't ALL bad.  Indeed, the hippies contributed some lasting and positive cultural changes.  My ability to wear shorts on a hot summer day is but one; my long hair is another.  And you just can't discount all the cool music that we still hear on the radio to this very day.  The list goes on and on.

Clearly, history is not black and white.  It's subtle and nuanced, and, even though it deals with events from the past, history is always being written and rewritten, as we find new primary sources, and as society's perspective continually changes.  But in the South, and in my home state of Texas, and a few other places, politics trumps history as a work in progress, trumps contradictory evidence, and is seen as another weapon in the culture wars.  That is, extreme right-wing political partisans have managed to stack state school boards, and they're consciously twisting and altering history for the express purpose of manipulating our culture so as to gain ever more political advantage.

And, needless to say, that's horrifying.  No matter how lame the hippies were.

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