(I just wrote a reply that seems to have evaporated... if this is a repeat, my apologies.)

I think it's important to know your ethics and make a stand... and also important to accept the imperfect nature of our world and the grayness of said ethics.

There's a lot to what Dave B says.

My favorite example of how gray ethics can be: imagine you want to clean up your society, which is corrupt, and so you run for office. Your choice:

-run a dirty campaign (it's the only way you can win)
-lose
-smash the system from the outside.

The last option may seem the "cleanest" ethically, but only until you consider how many lives will probably be lost in the ensuing battle for power.
Losing may seem the next "cleanest," but now you face a situation where your society remains under the thumb of the corrupt—and you had the power to stop them!

Finally, the dirty campaign. Let's say you win. Your moral code will never quite fit you again... and yet if you do good deeds, and generations that follow evolve to a more perfect set of ethic standards, then can we claim the ends justified the means?

Definitely a subtle issue without an easy answer...

...that deserves more attention and discussion than it gets.
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