Interesting man; John Locke (1632–1704) Long before Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, there was the more fundamental Social Contract of John Locke, an English philosopher and physician who was one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. In the Social Contract,

people must knowingly agree to live and work together. If any party at any time breaks the pact, then other members of community may choose to remove the dissenter or dissolve the union altogether.
Liberals believe Locke is the Father of Liberalism because he laid the foundation

for liberal epistemology (how we know what we know). Conservatives believe he is the Father of Conservatism because he founded a natural law political philosophy, which assumes that one has an innate nature and values.
Libertarians also like Locke. To Locke, property is acquired

by exercising one’s labor over it. His conception of government is one of limits, with the rule of law dampening the impulse to tyranny. However, though the individual in Locke’s worldview has rights, those rights are also bound by social duties and responsibilities.

Locke’s defense of the English Declaration of Rights in 1689, with its right of free speech, right to bear arms, and freedom from taxation without representation, inspired the American colonists to regain these rights nearly a century later.

As more than one political philosopher has pointed out, the American Revolution was basically a conservative event, a thunderous way to recover rights that had been brushed under the rug by King George III and Parliament.