better hell than heaven if it's your heaven

"... well, I will not renounce my vote for the war. It was a rational decision; and with equal rationality I understand that it appears now to have possibly been a flawed decision, possibly flawed in the sense that we can never have experience of the alternatives and so can never know which for certain was the more foolish reckoning no matter how foolish the decision we did make appears now to be - and any who suppose otherwise are cowards or charlatans. But let me ask you this: you are lost on a deserted stretch of road in a wilderness; two cars stop to help you, one driven by an incoherent youth smelling of drugs and lassitude and the other by a middle aged man of reasonable demeanor; you choose a ride with the latter; he turns out to be a fool, a clueless driver with no sense of what he's doing so that you end up more lost than you were before; based on the pre-existing evidence was your decision wrong? Obviously not, it just turned out that way - and so what would be the point of apologizing for it? The apology is meant to appease the hurt feelings of whom exactly or undo what perceived wrong? Not all choices are the same and it's disingenuous to act as if they are. No, renouncing my vote would be wasted breath to serve a purpose whose value is hard to discern - unless of course my values change and I come to admire the dissembling ways of people."