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I'm not at all sure that a contract is the best basis for individual rights.

What if there is another basis for individual rights? What if Fred is right and there is a theological basis. What if philosopher Alan Gewirth is right and there is an a priori basis? (The libertarian Roger Pilon has used a version of Gewirth's argument to support strong individual rights.) If either of those approaches is correct, then the contract Rawls talks about isn't necessary. It's irrelevant. Indeed, it's a disaster.

And even if we do agree that a contract is the best basis for rights, I'm not sure Rawls' interpretation of a contract is the right one to rely upon. If we are going to make use of a hypothetical contract, why not consider the sort of contract that real people would be willing to make?

What might that sort of contract look like? It seems to me that real people with the usual knowledge of who they are might very well agreed to a contract that maximized their freedom and minimized the coercive power of government (or other people) over them. In other words, a social contract among real people might very well end in some form of libertarianism.