Is Locke right in saying State should protect rights?

Rousseau went a bit more far in social contract theory, telling that it is to citizens to protect their rights and that the state is only here to follow the general will of all citizens. Each citizen abandons its rights to the state as long as the state follows the general will. It raises the question about the legitimacy of the policies of the state and leaded to French Revolution. All social contract theories are outdated. By itself the concept of social contract is an intellectual sham : you can contract only between people alive and free to refuse to contract. A contract never signed by anybody and claiming to bind humans for future generations is something null and void. Ask any lawyer.