Hey, Frank:

Even in the Village in the early 60's, where there was a lot of genuine support and feeling of community, there were smaller groups of people who were "into" some particular part of the folk scene. There were the psychedelic folkies heavily into drugs, the Wobblies and labor organizer crowd, the college kids trying to become the next Kingston Trio, the Old Time music crowd, and people hard to characterize as diverse as Tiny Tim and Reverend Gary Davis. And then Dylan came and spawned a whole new generation of protest singers. Mostly though, people seemed to be able to come together around the music and get along reasonably well. As so many others have commented on in this thread, the connection was the music. And while this is a music site, we can't make music together, so we've got too much time on our hands and too many hard and fast opinions.
I guess that I didn't buy into any particular group all that much because folk music was just one kind of music that I loved. I was also listening to jazz, and rhythm and blues and rock and rock and roll.

Sometimes, having a little distance is very healthy.

Jerry