[MD] Coerce me? How?

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
No. The founders and their forebears got it from REVELATION.

[Arlo]
Not according to Pirsig. I'll stick with him.

"And yet, although Jefferson called this doctrine of social equality 
"self-evident," it is not at all self-evident. Scientific evidence 
and the social evidence of history indicate the opposite is 
self-evident. There is no "self-evidence" in European history that 
all men are created equal. There's no nation in Europe that doesn't 
trace its history to a time when it was "self-evident" that all men 
are created unequal. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is sometimes given 
credit for this doctrine, certainly didn't get it from the history of 
Europe or Asia or Africa. He got it from the impact of the New World 
upon Europe and from contemplation of one particular kind of 
individual who lived in the New World, the person he called the 
"Noble Savage." "(Pirsig)

He got it from CONTEMPLATION. Maybe you should try to understand that 
Pirsig guy someday.

[Platt]
Gee, I wonder why I would tend to believe those who founded a nation 
over a college instructor or some modern SOM intellectual?.

[Arlo]
You mean Pirsig? Because that's who I quoted.