Consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote in 1762 the classic treatise on freedom, The Social Contract, with its familiar opening line: "Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains." But the liberty Rousseau envisioned wasn't freedom from state tyranny; it was freedom from personal obligations. In his mind, the threat of tyranny came from smaller social groupings family, church, workplace, and the like. We can escape the claims made by these groups, Rousseau said, by transferring complete loyalty to the state. In his words, each citizen can become "perfectly independent of all his fellow citizens" through becoming "excessively dependent on the republic." This idea smacks so obviously of totalitarianism that one wonders by what twisted path of logic Rousseau came up with it. Why did h…