In Reply to: Let's examine the facts posted by Thinker on October 11, 2006 at 11:29:11:
Well said. Also, so many who were recruited early on from the hippie genre were in their teens and early twenties, hardly a time of good judgement in any era. Many were recruited off of college campuses.
Berg did want functional people. In the case of addicts who were recruited, they had to be over the addiction in fast fashion or they'd be out.
The fifties had gangs galore and lots of alcohol and rumbling. The sixties had hippies- sex, drugs and rock and roll.
The seventies had disco- sex, drugs and disco, cocaine came into high fashion.
The eighties rocketed crack cocaine into the mainstream. Wow. The hats, the hair, the pants and the sashay.
The nineties, (and eighties) sex, ex, and more drugs and more liquor and more sex in spite of the AIDS scare of the eighties.
2000's? Meth is back with a vengeance. Crack is still around. Lots of hard core drugs are more common than ever. But lots of people dress nicer.
Berg could've scapegoated any generation's youth as the root of his problems. This is not to excuse any behaviors people were prone to before joining or engaged in after. But it wasn't the "hippies" that created Berg.