 Critics also excoriated Walzer’s appeal to individual rights (see especially Wasserstrom 1978; Luban 1980b). They questioned the normative purchase of his metaphor of the organic social contract (if hypothetical contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on, then what are metaphorical contracts worth?). They challenged his claim that states guarantee individual security: most obviously, when humanitarian intervention seems warranted, the state is typically the greatest threat to its members.