Rishon Rishon

Judge-Penitents

The next time I hear someone proclaiming with glee their membership in a despised group, class, or race, saying "we are bad, we are evil, so we should..." (or some such thing) I will remember this: 

Albert Camus named them judge-penitents, because they indict themselves only to condemn others; and he hated them as much for their moral cowardice as for their hypocrisy; because they declared themselves in fellowship with the guilty yet presumed to retain the rights of judgment and condemnation. Their's was an arrogance of existential proportions.