I’m happy to see this dialogue begin. But since you are representing both sides, I thought a bit of history might help. I was at pretty much every protest at U.C. Berkeley from fall ‘65 to spring ‘69. You ask:

“Once upon a time, weren’t hippie protests—their demands for free love and the rest—a conformist movement among the young of the day, albeit one more palatable to classical liberals now?”

Well no. Hippies didn’t organize protests — they would only tag along in the marches. There were no protests for free love. Politicos organized protests. Mainly against daily mass killings in Viet Nam and against up to 1,000 a month of American youth. Hippies = “drop out.” Politico = “revolution.”

We had it easy — first, there was the KKK-police enforced segregation to protest and then the war. We didn’t have to invent micro-aggressions we had honest-to-god mega-aggressions. Simple.

I’ve heard too main complaints from us old-fogies about your generation. (1) We hate the canceling stuff, done, as you make clear (thanks for that), by a tiny crazy minority. And we sympathize with the damage it causes the rest of you. (2) We are distraught to see the Berniecrats making the same mistake we made. This is our Albatross. But we do wish your generation would at least hear our Ancient-Mariner warnings.

And one more “no,” The conformism of the ‘60s was nothing like what you describe today:

“...few among the remaining 95% would want to risk gaining a reputation as a bigot that could ruin their precious few years at college—and dog them on social media during job hunts and long after.”

Not conforming to hippie or politico counter-cultures would have helped, not hurt with job hunts, and would never have ruined our college years let alone our life “long after.” We conformed because it felt good, not out of fear. That is what scares us about wokism.