Graeme Wood summarizes Mark Steyn's show trial today for The Atlantic.

The plain language of the British Columbia Human Rights Code prohibits exactly the kind of ridicule and contempt to which Mark Steyn exposes everyone left of John Howard, often with dazzling effect. He's guilty as charged -- and not only of violating the BC Code. The U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects against "attacks upon honor and reputation." These are Steyn's tools of trade. But the U.N. version, I note, also guarantees "the right to freedom of opinion and expression," which by contrast with protection from taunters seems like an actual human right, and a right in direct conflict with the right not to have one's honor attacked. The B.C. Human Rights Code is at least consistent: it makes no mention of the right to free expression at all. Whatever else the Steyn show-trial demonstrates, it's proven that "human rights" remains a hopelessly muddled concept, and that British Columbia is a place where the best face conviction, even when the worst aren't filled with passionate intensity.

Wood's conclusion? The hyper-sensitive Canadian Islamic Wankers are much less creative than were those who opposed Salmon Rushdie's Satanic Verses, back in the good old days across the pond.

And the world is poorer for it—in so many ways. Read the whole thing.

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