I take it that ninjas solve problems using the most efficient way possible. Sometimes that involves killing people. Naruto is an idealist who is somehow able to make it into a reality. In a show it's okay, but in real life the opposite is true. We rever the efficient and the logical while looking down on the dreamers. Dreamers who can make their dream come true are on in a million.
Another way that I think about them is that an idealist (the ones that make it through) changes the world. The realists keep it running.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
No, he lost, irreversibly, when he couldn't find the third path when he had to choose from murdering his own people, save one, or dying with all of them. While Naruto is a hopeless idealist, what happened in Konoha was still a giant tragedy and a shining example of why Naruto's message is better than Danzo's. You can't save your people by murdering a big chunk of them. Such thinking is a paradox.