Social contract theory is never too far removed from American political conversation. It shows up all the way back at our Founding when Thomas Jefferson presented the cause for American independence in decidedly contractual terms. The sole purpose of government, he wrote in the Declaration of Independence, is to secure individual rights, and government derives its "just powers from the consent of the governed." Little could he imagine, as he borrowed his way through Locke's Second Treatise, that this phrase would come to be used to justify a nearly limitless array of intrusions against the individual rights he sought to protect.