Avram > You should take your own advice. There are gedolim in Lakewood.
Thanks for agreeing and for an advice to follow my wise advice! A good challenge.
As a personal aside, one of my Teachers is a Lakewood resident for maybe 60 years. I never asked him about transfer payments. But you are not asking me to learn personally at Lakewood, but to respect Lakewood derech, right?
I agree that there is some similarity to how Avira looks at modernim. Let me try to look from outside, maybe you can do it better:
1) I do not choose my learning sources based on their reading or not of Kant or knowing calculus, or even political or social positions. I guess I’d draw a line for those supporting Arafat or Putin, but this is, b’H, not a big group at our times.
2) You can see me urging Avira to understand the positive sides of people he is criticizing. No response. I think I fully appreciate successes of yeshiva/hareidi movement in getting us to the current moment.
3) It well may be that their social policies are still correct en masse. Still, In my thinking, there are many people who are capable of better living: better in a Jewish sense. I also suspect that gedolim’ opinions is not as the oilam sees it, or it is not the same for everyone. I know people whose children were in anti-college yeshivos but RY were fine in private with these particular kids going to college. I do not think Steipler tried to stop R Twersky also.