Wednesday, November 09, 2005
(10:55 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
National Admit You're Wrong Day
I declare today, November 9, to be National Admit You're Wrong Day. That's right -- today you don't have to make minor concessions to maintain the impression that you're debating in good faith while still refusing to budge on substantive issues; today you don't need to go through the acrobatics of saying that even though you must now, for example, withdraw your support for the Iraq War, you were still in fact right to support it at the time based on the information on hand, so that ultimately you were right the whole time even though you've held two contradictory opinions in succession; today you don't need to try to defuse a tense situation by deploying the "agree to disagree" thing; today you don't need to distract people from your idiocy by endlessly quibbling over procedural issues so as to endlessly defer the moment on which rightness or wrongness can be determined with any confidence (i.e. -- and I am hereby coining and claiming this phrase -- doing a comment-box fillibuster).No, today you have it easy -- you can just admit you were wrong. Flat-out, factually wrong, on many different points, in error, deluded, blinded by hero worship and partisan rancor, lazy and uninterested in gathering facts -- whatever variation of "wrong" we're dealing with here, you can admit it, freely, openly, with admirable candor.
Right-wing bloggers and "liberal hawks" will probably find this to be an especially cathartic experience, having not admitted they were wrong for well over four years (Belle, of course, excepted), but honestly, everyone is wrong sometimes.
Except for me, of course -- that's why I can declare this day! Sovereign is the one who decides the state of exception -- which, incidentally, France is now in.
