But I do not believe in whitewashing history.

1) The Hippies, Peaceniks, Flower children did not organize any of them. They were too busy getting high to do something that took a bit of work. Protests, for the most part, were organized by disciplined and organized radicals and radical groups such as Students for a Democratic Society. If you look at the defendants in the 1968 Democratic convention Chicago 8 trial none of them were Hippies, etc.

2) Many of the protests and actions were violent. And not just because of police overreaction. Campus buildings were bombed and burned. Banks, draft boards and other government buildings were trashed. On marches windows were broken and objects thrown at police. Yes, there was many police overreactions, but you can only poke a junkyard dog so much before they react.

the protests as I was busy raising my Irish
triplets-now 58, 59 and 60. BTW, my husband was a junkyard dog, one of the good guys. He went on to become a forensic expert. Thank you again for your post.

Some campus protests were spontaneous but the big and occasionally destructive ones mostly were not. There's another difference, though: In those days we were protesting the actions of our own government, not those of the government of another country. And I don't recall that any of our Vietnam war protests included insults or threats against a particular ethnic or religious group. Some of the current protests allegedly have involved threatening behavior toward Jewish students and/or Palestinian students, and that's unacceptable regardless of anybody's First Amendment right to protest.