PRESTOPUNDIT

Lenin was just the first of the great vision-driven dictators of the 20th century. Like Hitler and Mao after him, Lenin was prepared to sacrifice the lives of millions of human beings on the altar to his vision.

Even in democratic nations, there are people who can impose their vision on other people, with no consequences for being wrong and no requirement that they prove themselves right.

Social workers have for years tried to stop white couples from adopting orphans from minority groups because that goes against their vision. They don't need a speck of evidence to back up their preconceptions.

Many a minority child has been ripped out of the only home they have ever known by social workers who have sent them off to live among strangers, or a whole succession of strangers in foster homes, simply because a vision says that this is better than having them grow up with a white couple who have raised them from infancy.

Everyone has visions but everyone is not in a position to indulge those visions, or to impose them on other people, without suffering any consequences for being wrong. Even the biggest businesses can find themselves looking red ink in the face if their idea of what the public wants turns out to be different from what the public will buy. Federal judges, however, pay no price for being wrong, even if the costs to others -- sometimes the whole society -- turn out to be catastrophic. When murder rates skyrocketed after 1960s judges started conjuring up new "rights" out of thin air for criminals, there were no consequences for those judges, who had lifetime appointments and were not likely to be living in high-crime neighborhoods.