What do this outlandish ‘banning’ of a Transformer t-shirt from an aircraft and the Mark Steyn Human Rights Tribunal trial in Canada have in common?

This.

In US and English law there is a so-called eggshell skull doctrine. This has it that if one commits a tort or crime, one has to accept the responsibility for all the losses suffered by the victim even if some of them were unpredictable.

So, if you hit someone on the nose but unbeknownst to you (or even the victim) the victim’s nose was especially and freakishly fragile, you can be held liable if you alas inflict massive brain damage in this case even if in 99.999% of such cases that would not occur.

The point of this of course is to protect everyone fairly from tortious acts, and thereby deter such acts.

The ‘human rights’complaint against Mark Steyn in Canada is in effect a bewildering, pernicious attempt to extend this doctrine to cover every eventuality, even when the action complained of is not unlawful. 

Mark Steyn writes an article in a prominent Canadian publication about what he sees as a looming clash between traditional ‘European’ values and ‘Islamic’ values. Some Muslims do not like it.

They press the editors to give them a full unedited ‘right of reply’ and try to badger them into making a sizeable payment to an Islamic charity (Note: extortion?). The editors robustly say ‘Get Lost’.

The objectors resort to Canada’s human rights tribunal machinery, which seems to have amazing and far-reaching communistic powers to suppress freedom of expression if a complaint is deemed to be ‘justified’ by virtue of the injury allegedly caused to "dignity, feelings and self respect":

37 (1) If the member or panel designated to hear a complaint determines that the complaint is not justified, the member or panel must dismiss the complaint.
(2) If the member or panel determines that the complaint is justified, the member or panel
(a) must order the person that contravened this Code to cease the contravention and to refrain from committing the same or a similar contravention,
(b) may make a declaratory order that the conduct complained of, or similar conduct, is discrimination contrary to this Code,
(c) may order the person that contravened this Code to do one or both of the following:
(i) take steps, specified in the order, to ameliorate the effects of the discriminatory practice;

…(d) if the person discriminated against is a party to the complaint, or is an identifiable member of a group or class on behalf of which a complaint is filed, may order the person that contravened this Code to do one or more of the following:
(i) make available to the person discriminated against the right, opportunity or privilege that, in the opinion of the member or panel, the person was denied contrary to this Code;
(ii) compensate the person discriminated against for all, or a part the member or panel determines, of any wages or salary lost, or expenses incurred, by the contravention;
(iii) pay to the person discriminated against an amount that the member or panel considers appropriate to compensate that person for injury to dignity, feelings and self respect or to any of them.
(3) An order made under subsection (2) may require the person against whom the order is made to provide any person designated in the order with information respecting the implementation of the order.
(4) The member or panel may award costs
(a) against a party to a complaint who has engaged in improper conduct during the course of the complaint, and
(b) without limiting paragraph (a), against a party who contravenes a rule under section 27.3 (2) or an order under section 27.3 (3).
(5) A decision or order of a member or panel is a decision or order of the tribunal for the purposes of this Code.
(6) The member or panel must inform the parties and any intervenor in writing of the decision made under this section and give reasons for the decision.

Thus the way appears to be open for the Tribunal now hearing the Steyn case to ban in Canada one of the top-selling books on Amazon. Pop!

This is obviously insane on the level of normal democratic practice. But what is wrong with it in a deeper, philosophical way?

It basically means that society has to be organised around the limited tolerance and imagination of its most neurotic and extreme members. Anyone who is ‘offended’ by anything can raise a complaint and have some hope of getting ‘redress’, even when the alleged offender is doing something otherwise lawful (ie enjoying the right to air his/her opinions). 

This in turn trends towards creating a culture of defensive whiners, adults by age but seven-year olds by attitude, who go rushing and blubbering to teacher just because someone said something nasty about them.

Feelings trump reason – the ultimate moral disaster.

Where does the Transformer t-shirt case fit in?

Because we have drifted into a situation where the state assumes for itself the requirement to ‘balance’ all competing claims betwen Reason and Feelings, on no sound or even articulated basis of principle whatsover.

And once that idea gets universalised – once the proposition seeps into official instinct that everything (a) in principle might need balancing (b) by officials –  we have reached a very high-water mark of Liberal Fascism.

The t-shirt case shows just how far state control has gone far out of control in the UK. The Heathrow officials who dealt with this episode did not think:

"Hmm. How do we balance the idea that some people might dislike this t-shirt with his freedom to wear what he damn well chooses? Ooops. We don’t, of course. His right trumps all. Shame on us for even contemplating his clothing in the first place!"

Instead they thought:

"Uh-oh. This maybe could be provocative. What if someone complains? We could get into trouble if we did not do anything. Better to be safe than sorry – let’s make him change it!"

Thus what in fact get ‘balanced’ are rival furtive nervousnesses within the minds of the officials about purely theoretical complaints. The rights of the passenger are not even weighed. Appalling.

Back in Canada, the Tribunal listening to the fanciful complaints of a few activists and wondering whether to ban a best-selling book likewise are ponderously and self-importantly weighing and balancing issues they should not be touching.

The classic hard anti-free speech argument goes like this:

"Of course there are limits on free speech! What about someone who screams fire in a crowded theatre, causing panic leading to someone being trampled to death?!"

But even if one accepts that that sort of behaviour maybe does merit sanction, it is not the same as a few people in a theatre reacting in a panicky self-indulgent way just because another member of the audience says something to a friend which they happen to overhear and don’t like.

In that case the core issue for society is how to deal with the neurotic tiny minority who take offence loudly and unnecessarily when the vast majority are quite content. And the state’s sanctions regime needs to be tilted to deter them, not the law-abiding subject of their pitiful querulousness.

So a great deal is at stake in the Steyn case, about the way mature Western democracies organise themselves and their core moral incentive structures.

Do we incentivise and uphold values of robust self-reliance and individual choice?

Or do instead encourage defensive paranoia?

Do we encourage adulthood?

Or childishness?

Do we employ armies of civil servants to seek to strike a carefully considered, duly weighed and weighted balance – between Good Sense and Stupidity?