Neville,
“Sadly, this discussion transcends the YWN coffeeroom. There is this whole website dedicated to making exactly the types of arguments we’re seeing here that I came across. There is a major constituency of people who want to argue all eruvin are inherently kosher and twist Reb Moshe’s words to sound like even he would agree. Rest assured, you haven’t gone insane; all the things you are saying are the normative shittah.”
Sorry, but no one argued that all eruvin are inherently kosher. Each city or neighborhood has to be paskened on seperately, based on its unique properties.
In fact, take rabbi hershel shachter of the OU, he holds that Manhattan is NOT a reshus harrabim while his summer town, Tannersville, NY IS a reshus harabim (assuming we don’t go by the 600,000 criterion).