On doing the right thing ...

... Book Review: Beautiful Souls - WSJ.com.

Mr. Press is initially astonished that his subjects are not the rebellious intellectuals he imagined them to be but rather quiet people leading ordinary lives. Although he calls them "nonconformists," he concludes that in important ways they epitomize tradition: Firm believers in the values that undergird a system they hold dear, whether it be a society or a code of professional ethics, they abhor the notion of crime committed in its name. In this way, he writes, they represent "the flip side of the banality of evil"—people who, through choices large or small, open up new possibilities for good.