I too was "under the spell" of the misdirection of the social contract theory. I attended a very pro-liberty/constitution liberal arts college and read the very words of Hobbes and Locke on the subject. Though we took a more Lockean perspective, we were still taught the brilliance of the malleable social compact theory of Locke and how it can be refashioned after a tyrant took place (who broke the old contract and reset the grounds to the State of Nature). However, what people forget is that a contract is only valid when voluntary; and the thought that all men and women are subject to arbitrary laws simply because their parents created these laws and put their children in subjection to them is illogical. The children, logically, should not be bound to these laws, unless the voluntarily agree to them. The laws must be agreed upon each generation -- and not collectively (because the justified uses of the SCT is simply a form of collectivism) but by each man and woman born into that society. Society is made of individuals, not a mass glob of a collective.

With that said, I think we should go back to Locke's state of nature: "The State of Nature, although a state wherein there is no civil authority or government to punish people for transgressions against laws, is not a state without morality. The State of Nature is pre-political, but it is not pre-moral. " (http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH2b)
Basically, Locke's understanding of the State of Nature is the peaceful, voluntary anarchist society we yearn for today.