The word "hippie" is one of those words cobbled together by the media—Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle, to be exact—in order to put a disparate group of people who are perceived to share one or more characteristics into a single category. It's another one of these terms that tries to pigeon-hole people, and as is almost always the case, it is often applied indiscriminately, broadly, and inaccurately. In short, it refers to some vague generality in the mind of the person using the term, but it usually fails miserably in any attempt to make a one-to-one correspondence with the real world.

Stereotypes of the hippie lifestyle included:

—Longer hair and fuller beards than what was currently acceptable (e.g., a well-trimmed Van Dyke beard).
—Tie-dyed T-shirts, dashikis, girls in bib-overalls, and bell-bottom pants (although I don't recall seeing very many tie-dyed T-shirts, and rarely bell-bottoms being worn by anyone except Tom Jones look-alikes and "would-be" hippies—high school kids who thought Melvin Krebs was "cool"). Head scarves, head-bands, beaded necklaces, and sandals.
—Often the above was assumed to include a general disregard for the niceties of personal hygiene.
—Musical tastes included psychedelic rock (Jimi Hendrix), blues (Janis Joplin), Eastern music (Ravi Shankar), funk (Sly and the Family Stone), and folk music of the Bob Dylan variety or Joan Baez doing protest songs, generally listen to while smoking pot, ingesting mescaline, shooting up, or dropping acid. Active musical interests often included casual performing—guitars were de rigueur (your chances of finding a hippie accordion player were pretty slim). Hit songs:   Michael, Row the Boat Ashore and Kum-Bye-Ya.
—Transportation was usually a VW bus with a daisies and peace symbols painted all over it.
—Political involvement generally consisted of liberal or progressive causes such as Civil Rights, protest against the Vietnam War, and was manifested by protest rallies, sit-ins, and sticking the stem of a flower into the barrel of a National Guardsman's rifle.
—Lifestyle included free love, communal living, the use of incense, and a mellow outlook on life, taking no thought for the morrow.

It is assumed by large numbers of what might be called "the less philosophically rigorous," that if one possesses or ascribes to one of the above listed characteristics, one ascribes to them all. For example, it was assumed by some that because Bob (Deckman) Nelson (building contractor), Judy Flenniken (Oceanography student), Dave DeSoto (newscaster at KOL radio), Nancy Quensé (Drama student), a fellow whose name I don't recall, but who had just graduated from Harvard in Economics, and I (studying English Literature and Music at the University of Washington), plus a dozen or so others (with a variety of "day jobs") who sang folk songs in coffeehouses in the Seattle area were all "hippies."   Why? Because, no matter how poorly we may have fit into the above list of stereotypes (all employed, either in the work force or as students, all well-groomed, representing a variety of political opinions, and out of the couple dozen or so, only three or four that I knew of who occasionally indulged in pot [none of the named people], and nobody drove a VW bus) we all sang folk songs in coffeehouses.

Conservatives almost invariably used the term "hippie" as an insult toward young adults who had leftist, liberal, and other progressive outlooks on life, no matter how far the rest of their life-style differed from the stereotype.

And the beat goes on. The implication of some posts in this thread (actually, the initiation of the thread itself) is that anyone who is a) old enough to have been around during the Sixties, and b) who has an interest in folk music, and c) who embraces liberal or progessive views, especially espressing misgivings about the present administration and opposition to such things as unnecessary and illegal wars—is an "old hippie."

"Hippie" is a very vague term.

Don Firth