In response to a question by some close friends I did some research. They wanted to know how hippies, who were so anti-government, could now be voting for the tyrannical Democrat-Union party?
I had to figure out the answer. Here is my response:
To understand how the hippies are behaving today it is important to look at my definition of who is a hippie and who was a hippie. By my calculations the hippies were a major part of the American baby boom; Americans born between 1945 and 1960. Roughly 60 million Americans. As of today baby boomers comprise 25% of our adult population.
During the hippie era (1965 to 1985), I used a “four orders of magnitude” categorization.
* There were 25,000 people who were the hippie organizers and leaders.
* The next 250,000 were the true hippies who used the language ‘pigs’, ‘ pad’ and ‘joint’; they hitchhiked, liked the smell of patchouli oil, wore old worn out hippie clothing, rarely cut their hair and came to all hippie events. The first question they asked each other was ‘What is your sign’? That question was part of their anti-hierarchical social value system. They did a wide range of drugs. They participated in the daily life of the Whole Earth Catalog and dropped out of college if they ever started.
* The next 2.5 million young people called themselves ‘hippies’, wore occasional hippie clothing, smoked pot occasionally and tried to buy food in bulk.
*The final 25 million, comprising roughly 40% of that generation, identified with the hippies in values and music.
The hippie belief system was based on a deep sense of rebellion against the society we lived in. We believed America was corrupt, tyrannical and hypocritical. Actual experiences with police were usually negative. We hippies believed we were creating a new society. Every experiment of every sort was considered a positive effort. That went for everything in food, healthcare, religion, clothing, home building, transportation and media. The most powerful ideas were the belief in universal human brotherhood and innate human goodness. Hippies believed that individual relationships were the most important relationships and that institutions, other than cooperative free associations, were undesirable. Everyone was equal and entitled to an equal voice in governance.
An offshoot of this hippie value cluster was a strong belief in starting our own businesses. Something at which the hippies excelled. They nevertheless had contempt for large businesses as part of the corrupt establishment institution.
The hippie values of the 25 million in this age cohort became assimilated. Many of the values of the 2.5 million who called themselves hippies were converted by New Age religions and Werner Ehrhardt-like symposiums into 19th century positivism.
The 250,000 genuine hippies moved out of their core cities of San Francisco, West LA, Austin, Seattle, Portland and settled in exurbia. I would guess that roughly half, I25,000 moved to exurbia and places like Hawaii. The rest, 125,000 remain in urban areas.
So how do they vote today.?
Hippies did not vote during the late 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s. They didn’t register to vote.
People tend to vote like their neighbors. Hippies have been increasingly voting since the late 1980’s but roughly half still do not register to vote, much like the rest of the population. That means that roughly 60,000 hippies live in exurban areas and vote Republican and another 60,000 live in urban areas and vote the Democrat-Union party
My best single piece of evidence is the town of Jerome on a NorthWestern hillside in Arizona. There are 440 people living there of whom 270 are over 40 years old and are pure original hippies. The rest of the town is mostly hippie. Jerome is exurban and voted 80% for Mitt Romney in 2012.
I do not claim accuracy for my description of hippie politics. I would summarize it by saying that hippies vote the way their neighbors do and they have scattered throughout the United States in ways that reflect the general population of their age cohort.