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There is a temptation as old as politics itself: the desire to use power not merely against aggression, fraud, or violence, but against whatever society currently finds distasteful, immoral, offensive, or unsettling.

The justification is always presented as noble.

"We're only trying to protect people."

"No one needs this anyway."

"This is an exception."

Yet history suggests that the object being prohibited is often secondary. The real objective is the precedent.

Because once a society accepts that rights may be suspended whenever enough people dislike something, liberty itself no longer rests on principle but on popularity.

And popularity is a notoriously unstable foundation.

Rights Exist Precisely for Unpopular Things

No one needs constitutional protections for actions everyone already approves of.

No one demands freedom of speech for opinions universally celebrated.

Rights become meaningful only when they protect actions, ideas, lifestyles, or associations that others find disagreeable.

If freedom exists only for what is fashionable, then freedom does not exist at all.

The principle of rights is simple: peaceful conduct does not become aggression merely because many people dislike it.

A society that forgets this quickly begins confusing moral disapproval with criminality.

The Slippery Slope Is Not a Fallacy

We are often told that concerns about precedent are exaggerated.

"We're only banning this one thing."

But political power has a peculiar characteristic: once acquired, it rarely remains confined to its original purpose.

Every successful expansion of authority becomes evidence for the next one.

If offense justifies censorship today, then greater offense will justify broader censorship tomorrow.

If moral disgust justifies prohibition today, then lesser forms of disapproval will eventually become sufficient as well.

The principle quietly shifts from:

"Rights may only be restricted when rights are violated."

to:

"Rights may be restricted whenever enough people believe they should be."

At that point, rights cease to be rights and become temporary permissions.

Tyrants Never Begin With Popular Targets

The first target is almost always something many people already dislike.

Something vulgar.

Something offensive.

Something easy to condemn.

The public is reassured:

"Surely you're not defending this?"

But this entirely misses the point.

One does not defend liberty because every exercise of it is admirable.

One defends liberty because the alternative is to empower authorities to decide which peaceful conduct deserves protection and which does not.

History demonstrates that governments rarely stop after discovering such powers.

The category of prohibited things has a tendency to grow.

Rapidly.

Protection Is Often the Excuse

This does not mean that everyone advocating restrictions has malicious intentions.

Many sincerely believe they are protecting society.

But intentions matter less than incentives and precedents.

The precedent being established is that rights are conditional.

That liberty exists only until public sentiment changes.

That peaceful individuals may be coerced simply because others dislike their choices.

This principle is extraordinarily dangerous because it can be applied universally.

Every faction imagines it will wield this power only against its enemies.

Almost none imagine that one day their own values may become unpopular.

Liberty Requires Discipline

A free society demands something difficult from its citizens:

The willingness to defend the rights of people they disagree with.

The willingness to tolerate peaceful conduct they find foolish, offensive, or morally questionable.

Because once rights become contingent upon approval, everyone eventually discovers that they are unpopular to someone.

The question is therefore not:

"Do I like this?"

Nor:

"Is this morally admirable?"

The question is:

"Has anyone's rights been violated?"

If the answer is no, then coercion becomes infinitely more dangerous than the conduct being condemned.

Because the thing being prohibited today is temporary.

The precedent established by prohibiting it may endure for generations.

And that precedent, more often than not, was the point all along.

Christopher Nolan doesn’t believe in half measures.

The industry’s most bankable director swings for any fence he can find. That means for every creative misstep in his films, there’s a sequence that will blind you with greatness.

It’s the best way to describe “The Odyssey,” Nolan’s retelling of Homer’s epic poem. It’s masterful and maddening, a triumph that occasionally can’t get out of its own way.

It’s a must-see experience, in a theater, of course. And, with a few tweaks, it might have lived up to every molecule of the pre-release hype.

Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the Greek leader aching to return to his family and homeland. He spearheaded the military attack on Troy, a battle won courtesy of an overstuffed Trojan Horse.

He’s had enough war and death, but the journey home may be his most perilous assignment.

His loyal wife (Anne Hathaway) is considering any number of suitors to replace Odysseus in his absence, but she clings to hope that he’ll come back unharmed. Young Telemachus (Tom Holland, miscast) also pines for a father he barely knew.

Other souls hope he’ll stay gone forever, including Antinous (Robert Pattinson), a soldier with murky allegiances.

The massive cast includes Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, but her modest screen time belies the pre-release frenzy surrounding her casting. Elliot Page, another casting news kerfuffle, falls into a similar bucket, but the screenplay plays up the character’s bravery in ways that confirm some critics’ fears.

It’s a distraction. The miscue is also a microscopic part of a three-hour production. It should be processed as such.

Nolan’s films often demand multiple viewings to unlock their narrative tangles. “The Odyssey” may deserve that treatment for spectacle alone, but even with his penchant for nonlinear plots, this tale is deceptively simple.

So, too, are the set pieces, which feel as raw and magnificent as anything we’ve seen over the past few years. A fascinating encounter with a hungry cyclops rushes to mind.

Stunning. Jaw-dropping. Add your favorite superlative here, and it’ll fit like a glove.

Could anyone, be it Spielberg, Tarantino or Scott, render what we see with such spectacle? It’s not online activism to shout, “not a chance.”

Yet flaws abound, and they magnify during a chaotic third act. A film like “The Odyssey” shouldn’t ape a “John Wick” installment in its visceral overkill, yet one battle does just that.

And a strategy laid out by a key character feels as uninspired as it is absurd. That third-act wrinkle upends the film’s otherwise solid pacing.

So do the presence of supporting players (Zendaya, Charlize Theron), who should impact the story but don’t. John Leguizamo is somewhat better as a blind man with strong ties to Odysseus. He, too, suffers from a previous plot device that can’t be shared here.

And, yes, it all matters. The greatest directors of our age could use a neutral soul to advise them against such obvious miscues.

Nolan is working on a different level than every other filmmaker today. His grasp of technology, his eagerness to wow with every shot, is unrivaled. Some of his recent projects have reflected his cool, almost detached approach to character, but Damon’s performance flicks away such concerns.

The actor has never been so invested in a character’s humanity. The film’s anti-war bona fides will grab plenty of attention, but it’s only a small part of his performance.

This is the film that may make us stop taking Damon for granted.

The Nolan factor: From Batman to Oppenheimer, The Odyssey’s director’s greatest hits https://t.co/l7dSneMOi7

— Irish Independent (@Independent_ie) July 15, 2026

Nolan’s mastery has never been in doubt. So why are the film’s first few moments burdened by sound issues that make deciphering the dialogue a chore? Why tease out the film’s modern anachronisms with a rap-like bard (Travis Scott) and use current profanity to break the movie’s spell?

Geniuses like Tarantino, Cameron and Nolan need someone to rein in their self-destructive impulses. Yet we rarely see that partnership bloom.

At least, the evidence on screen suggests as much.

No matter. A flawed, frustrating epic from Nolan is better than two dozen generic features. Long may he noodle with perfection, even if he never quite gets there.

HiT or Miss: “The Odyssey” finds Christopher Nolan lunging for greatness, and succeeding more often than many of his peers.

The post Christopher Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ Is a Stunning, Frustrating Triumph appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

How can one sign a contract before birth? That question can’t be answered by President Bill Clinton, who said “we mustn’t break the solemn compact between generations,” in a 1998 address on Social Security. 

Such a speech constructs Social Security as a contractual mandate in need of protection rather than an insurance and redistribution program. Grand national “contracts” should face significant scrutiny, as they borrow the moral force of a contract without the requirements that define one.

No national contract language appeared in the Social Security Act when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it in 1935. The argument was about insurance, protection against unemployment, and poverty among the elderly. The original New Deal case for Social Security was that the federal government had a responsibility to create a system of economic security against the hazards of modern life. Contrast that with the contract framing of Social Security. Social Security becomes a question of sacred duty and obligation, not policy. Altering the program, a necessity given the debt, would seem to be a generational betrayal.

But for contracts to be legally enforceable, at a minimum, both parties must be capable of consent. 

Legally, the four requirements of a contract are offer, consideration, acceptance, and an intention to create legal relations. A person not yet born cannot be offered a contract, consider it in any manner or ask for compensation, accept it in any way, or intend legal relations. By any measure, Social Security cannot be a legal contract.

True, some contracts allow you to consent in ways other than signature. John Locke’s ideas of Social Contract Theory hold that paying taxes and participating in the democratic process constitute a valid contract with the government. Even this type of contract, however, needs clear parties and justification for the consent. Social Security cannot meet this most basic criterion, as the Social Security contract relies on the participant before they are alive. To highlight this absurdity: I was born in 2005, and Social Security relied on my payments to beneficiaries long before I existed. I supposedly entered a contract decades before I, in any meaningful sense, existed. This is not a minor technicality but a central contradiction. A contract is, at root, an agreement between two parties; Social Security is neither an agreement nor between two parties.

The defender of Social Security may object that this is too literal. “Generational contract” is a mere metaphor. Such a notion creates a dilemma: if the phrase is only metaphorical, Social Security cannot carry the moral duty of an actual contract. Following that claim, younger workers are not morally bound by the choices of prior political actors. But Clinton clearly intended us to be so bound. If the phrase is meant to carry moral force and contractual obligations, then we are entitled to ask the basic questions: Who agreed? When did they agree? What were the terms? And how could people who were not consulted be said to have consented?

The metaphor survives by morphing into a form that is most convenient. When challenged, it is a metaphor. When used politically, it is an obligation — specifically (at least) 30 trillion in unfunded obligations over the next 75 years.

Once demographic realities are taken into account, relying on future generations of unborn contributors becomes less a matter of social contract than one of program solvency. Social Security is largely financed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Taxes from current workers fund benefits for current retirees. This system can only work if the number of workers is sufficient to pay for the number of retirees. That is not a timeless contract but gambling the future on unknown, and unknowable, demographic trends.

If fertility falls, immigration slows, the worker-to-beneficiary ratio declines, wage growth disappoints, or longevity increases faster than expected, the supposed contract becomes harder to honor. Retirees are told after a lifetime of payroll taxes that they will have secure funding, but the actual financing of that compact depends on workers yet unborn — workers who may never exist in sufficient numbers.

If the number of workers is insufficient, few remedies are available, and each has significant drawbacks. In short, options are limited to cutting benefits, raising taxes, or taking on still more national debt. All violate some of the system’s promises. Contracts don’t work under these conditions. A contract does not normally depend on a party that never consented, may not exist in sufficient numbers, and can have its obligations rewritten by future legislation. Yet this is exactly the structure of Social Security’s “generational bargain.”

To be clear, this is not a critique of Social Security for failing to predict the future perfectly. No government program can foresee every war, recession, pandemic, fertility decline, or demographic shift. The fault is not that Social Security lacks omniscience. The fault is that the pay-as-you-go system needs omniscience to function. Every time history turns, benefits and taxes need to be rewritten. Policymakers need to know the demographics of the far-off future to ensure the budget remains balanced. While year-to-year Social Security can survive without knowing the future, it is impossible in the long term to avoid repeated tax increases, benefit reductions, or new borrowing. All allow policymakers to retroactively alter the deal, while conscripted participants can only pray it isn’t altered further.

Social Security’s defenders should say what they mean and mean what they say. If the program is redistributive, defend the program as redistribution. If it is an anti-poverty policy, defend it as such. If it is forced retirement saving, defend forced saving. If it is social insurance, defend social insurance. Each of those claims may have merit, but it is in no shape or form a contract. 

It is a great disservice to the American people that a program as massive as Social Security, a program that takes 6.2 percent (often twice as much) of every paycheck, is so poorly argued for, and its rationale is murky and drifting. 

Justice requires that a program of this magnitude have clearly articulated goals and functions. Unfortunately, Social Security does not. A contract requires intent and consent. Unfortunately, Social Security mocks them. Even taxation requires the consent of the governed, and representation of the taxed, to distinguish itself from tyranny, extortion, and abuse. Unfortunately, Social Security defies that standard.