Great question. As time went on in the counterculture movement that actually started with the "beatniks" of the 1950s, things began to water down with the addition of people who joined the movement strictly due to some of the hedonistic attractions that were rampant and easily-accessible back then....abandonment of responsibility, disdain for authority , lots of drugs and sex, etc. So, just like a lot of popular cultural movements, by the time the early-to-mid 70s rolled around, there were a lot of "hippies" that were clearly there just for the party. Where the definition really begins to clarify itself is when it comes to the political front I would say. You couldn't be a true "hippie" unless you were (sorry Georges) an anti-establishment, anti-war left-wing advocate of politics. I knew a lot of kids who had long hair and dressed the part....who loved to smoke dope and "ball" hippie chicks that also thought we should nuke Hanoi during the Vietnam war era. Those people aren't true "hippies" in my book....just opportunists.
To say, however, that there was a significant difference between a 60s radical in Berkeley or Des Moines is probably inaccurate. I remember a serious issue that took place at Washington University in St. Louis in that era when a group of anti-war activists firebomed the ROTC building on campus. It was a big deal that came straight out of the heartland of the country, not some "fruits and nuts" place like Berkeley. Every major city across the country had a faction of people who fit this hard-core profile.
I guess it depends on what criteria you would use to define what a "Hippie" was/is. To me, it was more of a political and philosophical definition rather than whether you liked to smoke dope, listen to acid rock and bang stoned-out braless chicks wearing halter tops and bell-bottoms. Somewhere, these definitions ceased to remain separated and, hence, you end up with the foul-smelling perversion of the genre to which you seem to be more closely exposed.
