PAA:
1) Please specify which quotations you think are out of context. Just as you indicate you can’t quote five pages of RNL’s speech, I’m sure you can understand why five pages from RJBS’ book wasn’t quoted and ellipses were used to indicate where the relevant quotes continued elsewhere. I don’t believe it was taken out of context. If RJBS contradicted his own opinion in other writings (“in his other writings he expresses a different position”), you still can’t take someone to task for quoting him with his own precise words. I’m sure talmidim don’t agree with how the position was portrayed there; the exact point was to disagree with them.
2) I read the entire cave speech a few years ago. It repeatedly refers to living in the cave experience. (Using Rashbi as an analogy.) I pulled it up again now in google books but the second page (p. 164) is blocked due to copyright issues. The entire point throughout that speech was to compare the Bnei Torah (in the yeshiva world) to living in caves whereas in YU they don’t live in caves but in the “real world”. Even if the term was “cave experience” rather than “cavemen”.
3) Are you referring to Rav Elchonon hy’d calling zionists amaleikim or Rav Shteinman shlit”a calling Lapid Amalek? Either way, there’s nothing to explain away. They stand by it.
4) The quote from Rav Volbe was straightforward. The wives were very worried that their husband didn’t know as much Torah as herself – and Rav Volbe reassured them not to worry as their husband’s Torah is far more in both scope and depth than their own.