counter+culture

=__Counter Culture in the 1960's__=

The counter culture in the 1960s began when people united to protest against the war, these people who originally started the counter culture were already anti-war but as their culture grew bigger and more popular, they ‘recruited’ more people along the way and as more people joined their movement, the more support the war lost.

People loved the idea of peace, fun colors and happiness after years of war and destruction. It started off as a small new culture and grew to thousands and thousands expressing themselves and protesting against the war. This was a big cause of why we lost the war, the fact that we lost so much support from our country.

“The core of the hippie philosophy can always remain impermeable: that of love and tolerance. Peace continues to be an essential message in today’s times, even if we no longer express tolerance through our style,” (cheers). The philosophy of the hippies is what caught people’s attention. With the war going on for so long, people were only seeing, learning, and hearing of death, destruction, and war, constantly. This new outlook on life with bright colors, music, dancing, freedom and peace was something that attracted to almost everyone. People liked the idea of peace and so naturally, most of population was turning their support from what used to be given to the war over to the new and hip counter culture. The United States needed all the support they could get when it came to the Vietnem war and with more and more people losing their faith in the United States to win the war, and too many people giving their support to other areas, the US suffered. “A large number of young Americans opposed the war in Vietnam. With the common feeling of anti-war, thousands of youths united as one.



This new culture of opposition spread like wild fire with alternate lifestyles blossoming, people coming together and reviving their communal efforts, demonstrated in the Woodstock, Art and Music Festival,” (counterculture of the sixties). The counter culture in the sixties was a great way for Americans to express how they felt about the war and they all did a great job of making their culture seem so appealing to outsiders that it made them want to join too. It is unfortunate that the counter effect of the culture was the fact that we were losing so much support in the war, but without the counter culture and people protesting, who knows how much longer the war would have lasted and things could have been much worse.

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