Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

“Whistleblowers personify valid but conflicted values that are deeply ingrained in most cultures,” Tom Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection and advocacy group, told me. “We’re all raised to be team players and to be cooperative. We don’t like people who are naysayers, troublemakers. We also don’t like tattletales, rats, squealers—there’s an instinctual contempt for those folks. On the other hand, we don’t respect bureaucratic sheep or people who say, ‘Well, I’m not going to get involved, because there’s nothing in it for me.’”