On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt delivered to an audience at the Sorbonne in Paris what is widely considered his most important speech, “Citizenship in a Republic.” Here is a brief excerpt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

In the Inferno from The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved the last — and worst — ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.

In my opinion, those in any “arena” are engaged and should ignore the criticism of those who are not.

That is especially true when facing a moral crisis that requires integrity rather than expediency.

Those who have no critics are probably not engaged.