1. Challenged on his government‘s arrogations of power and restrictions on legal freedoms, he elided truth, misrepresented facts, and deftly sidestepped uncomfortable questions.

2. And he has admirably avoided the rhetoric of victimology, such as that used when The Post editorialized that "lenders pushed tens of billions of dollars in potentially high–interest mortgage debt on people ill–equipped to handle it." Pertinent questions were elided by The Post‘s formulation of the problem, a formulation in the spirit of the liberal narrative about "predatory" lenders.

3. As a consequence, many tens of thousands of Darfuri lives are statistically elided by what is finally moral slovenliness. [See my mortality analysis of August 31, 2005, http://www.sudanreeves.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=67, http://www.sudanreeves.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid='4).] , http://www.sudanreeves.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid='4).]

4. Then, when terrorists strike in the nations like Britain or Spain, who supported such action, there is a groundswell of opinion formers keen to say, in effect, that it‘s hardly surprising – after all, if we do this to "their" countries, is it any wonder they do it to "ours"? So the statement that Iraq or Afghanistan or Palestine or indeed Chechnya, Kashmir or half a dozen other troublespots is seen by extremists as fertile ground for their recruiting – a statement of the obvious – is elided with the notion that we have "caused" such recruitment or made terrorism worse, a notion that, on any sane analysis, has the most profound implications for democracy.