Where have all those hippies gone?

Where have all those hippies gone?

http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/where-have-all-those-hippies-gone__2010-04-11.html

By ERIC LUSK
4/11/10

CAPE ELIZABETH ­ I grew up in Boulder, Colo., in the mid-1960s and
early 1970s. The Woodstock generation was in full roar.

In my daily walk home from kindergarten, seeing college students and
hippies holding signs and protesting was as common as watching
"Hogan's Heroes" or "Star Trek."

The music my mother played featured Dylan, Santana and The Band.
Reading material covered "I'm OK, You're OK," Castaneda's "Travels of
Don Juan" and later Gloria Steinem's Ms. Magazine.

When it came to film, my mother halted the consciousness-raising. So
"Paint Your Wagon Red" and "Patton" were the raciest movies my
brother and I saw until "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Looking to sum up the moral and cultural climate of that era, and fit
it on a bumper sticker, is pointless. However, I can fairly say the
freedom to "do your own thing" was in high regard, be it to drop out
of college, smoke grass, live in a tepee or volubly question "The Man."

The concert at Woodstock in 1969 deserved reverence, even if the
doo-wop band Sha Na Na landed on live albums from the event. A
generation had its shared capstone for spiritual expression and
anti-war speech, and the freedom to cast off narrow-thinking ways.

Scroll forward to Thursday, April 1, when The President of the United
States visited Portland to reaffirm support for the health care
legislation recently passed.

I'm no fan of the new law for many reasons, but I'll stick to one
that hit me as I stood on Park Avenue with other people opposed to
the new rules. As the ticket-holding attendees left the Expo, I saw a
bearded, white-haired man in his 60s, flashing a peace sign. Here was
irony decades in the making.

The new legislation dictates we all have insurance worthy of
government approval. If one works for a living, there are various
ways to get insurance, through an employer or on your own. But if you
fail to get insurance deemed up to snuff by our beloved bureaucrats
in the nation's capital, you have to pay a fine. You'll pay it to the
"The Man," or the Internal Revenue Service.

Unless you're Amish, if you fail to pay the IRS fine, the IRS will
send another "Man" to get the money out of you or put you in jail.
You will now have health care at the point of a gun. If you don't
work and have no money, health insurance is covered for you -- that's
where the freedom to "do your own thing" kicks in.

So the Woodstock generation dotted the crowd at a rally backing
legislation that can put me in jail if I don't buy "appropriate" health care.

Hey, didn't they face the draft and compulsory military service?
Couldn't buying health insurance be compulsory?

Take a quick look at the U.S. Constitution's enumerated powers of
Congress: Raising and maintaining a military is listed there plain as
day. But requiring somebody to own a residence, a car or health care
is nowhere in a document that required 15 years to draft. Those
prerogatives are reserved to either the states or individuals themselves.

There are limits to what we want the federal government telling us to
do, right? Isn't the draft gone? And wasn't Prohibition a good
example of the practical limits on the federal government to
determine what's best for millions upon millions of people?

When I speak with fans of the health care legislation, their eyes
roll in exasperation at mention of the Constitution. See, a clear set
of rules is annoying when your intentions are good.

In fairness to the Obama administration, every presidential
administration in my lifetime has had conflicts with the
Constitution. But that doesn't mean I like this conflict, either.

Excuse me, but is a constitutional race-to-the-bottom what we wanted?

Let's skip the constitutionality of the health care legislation for a
moment and admit we've landed in curious times: The freedom-lovers of
Woodstock past are the gray-haired statists of today.

I miss the hippies who loudly questioned "The Man's" authority to
tell people what to do with their lives.

Come back, we need you.

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