The word "paragons" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used as either a noun or an adjective. For example: "The athletes of this school are paragons of excellence." (noun) "He is a paragon of virtue." (adjective).
The idea for such an article had been pushed by two paragons of western European democracy – Italy and Austria – in the runup to enlargement, clearly out of fear of what those uncouth eastern Europeans might do (the irony being that sanctions – though not under article 7 – were first applied against Austria, when the far-right Freedom party joined the government in 2000).
At a predominantly white all-girls school, I had a hard time feeling comfortable in my body when I was surrounded by thin white friends and teen magazines which held up women who looked totally different from me as paragons of beauty.
If the nation's local surgeries were ever staffed by saintly philanthropists who gladly visited the sick in the small hours of a rainy morning, such paragons - although they exist - are now hard to find.
Steelmaking scrapes by on microscopic margins that make even airlines look like paragons of profitability.
But these paragons are now returning en masse to the mother country (just as America makes life more difficult for immigrants).
Many leaders on the continent are hardly paragons of democracy themselves, and so would never condemn a fellow despot.
Sometimes there seems to be a desire to be even-handed between pariahs and paragons: Amnesty recently surprised observers of the ex-communist world by producing a critique of the language law in Estonia a country usually seen as the best example of good government in the region.The big question in all this is priorities.
The dabbawalas, who all receive the same pay, are also seen as paragons of "bottom up" social entrepreneurship.
Given that it also counts Angola, Malaysia, Thailand and Uganda hardly paragons of civil liberty among its current members, disappointments may be more likely.
Dick Cheney, a former boss of Halliburton, an oil-and-gas company, made sure his secretive energy task-force relied heavily on his buddies from the energy industry.This is not to imply that politicians are paragons of either virtue or competence.
According to the Indian Express, a newspaper, he is now asking Satyam for the money back.Sources: *"Business groups in emerging markets: paragons or parasites?", by Tarun Khanna and Yishay Yafeh **"The separation of ownership and control in East Asian corporations", by Stijn Claessens, Simeon Djankov and Larry H.P. Lang.
