[colorado tanker]

Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part. By adding their energy and effort in order to enhance the possibility of a decent world, they may help deprive us of a spectacular experience — that of war. But then, there are some things we shouldn't have to live through in order to want to avoid the experience.

This is what an Ivy League education produces? It's incomprehensible.

[popdonnelly]

“is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy.”

Oh, quite the opposite. If Obama considered the ramblings of the Left to be “elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory”, then this country has been using them extensively. Generally to its detriment.

[DustyMoment]

This is what an Ivy League education produces? It's incomprehensible.

If you're really that surprised, go surprise yourself more - read Michelle's undergraduate thesis from Yale(?). It is equivalent to Hitler's Mein Kampf (which I tried to read out of curiosity as a younger man) in unreadability!!

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. "

What does this mean?
Was he reading Mannheim, Habermas, Gramsci, and Derrida?
How is that characteristic of "the American experience generally"? There is almost NOTHING at liberal Ivy league universities that is characteristic of "the American experience generally."