The "Bravery" of Hippies

     There was a comment made in class a while back with which I take some issue.  We were told as a class that the hippies protesting the Vietnam War took as much risk as the soldiers in the jungle.  As well as that some of the soldiers only went to war because they weren't brave enough to stay home.  Well.  Bullshit.  Let us weigh some of these risks.
     First of all, there is the risk of life.  For the soldier, there is an entire army on the other side that not only wants you to die but is actively working toward that goal.  For whatever reason, they are enemies.  For the hippies, sure there were lots of people that would have liked to see them die off, but it was not their daily occupation to kill them.  Aside from a few clashes with police and national guardsmen at protests and rallies, the chances of them dying was not very great.  They risked jailtime.  However, Canada did offer asylum so they could avoid that too.  However, I will agree that there was tremendous courage involved in getting the movement started.  Who wanted to be the first person to burn that draft card, not knowing whether or not the military would try them for treason?  After a while though, the movement became little more than an excuse to avoid serving their country in order to sit in the mud and get high.  I know many people who did exactly that.
     The second risk worth discussing is the risk of public alienization.  Who was it that took the biggest risk there?  Many younger people see how our military men and women are treated today in an unpopular war that has been going on for far too long.  They tend to draw comparisons, thinking that the treatment of our soldiers during the Vietnam War was the same as it is now.  These days, we respect our soldiers regardless of how we feel about the war.  This was NOT the case during the Vietnam War, as soldiers came home and were spat on where soldiers used to be given parades.  They were called "baby-killers" because a couple of Jane Fonda / John Kerry traitors communicated with the North Vietnamese and helped them make propaganda films criminalizing our troups.  This is the treatment our soldiers received:  A silver-star winner who had risked everything in four tours in Vietnam was spat on while arriving home, in the airport.  A silver-star winner!  I knew the man.  In fact, I knew two silver-star winners from the Vietnam War.  Both have passed on.  One of them had passed away without his closest friends knowing that he was a silver-star winner.  Most people never even knew he was in the military.  He hid that fact so that people wouldn't judge him.  So, the hippies hated our soldiers.  The public hated our soldiers.  Surely, soldiers from previous wars would have some understanding.  Nope.  They hated them even more because they lost the war.  The best that the soldiers could hope is that it would never come up that they were soldiers.  Many employers wouldn't even hire them.
     I will, however, admit that I love the music from that era.  The hippies that made the music I could do without.  I just have a hard time comparing the bravery of our soldiers in battle with the bravery of a hippy risking an overdose.