Emboldened by America’s drift to the right, a conservative columnist says in plain language what a heck of his political co-religionists likely think.

Registering [the poor] to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

In a way this sort of refreshing honesty is a barometer of the current political situation, in the US and right here at home. The seemingly inexorable move toward some form of far-right totalitarianism is abundantly illustrated elsewhere, of course: Witness conservative support for the neo-Nazi English Defence League and the racist Geert Wilders; the assertion on a wide-circulation US conservative blog that Democrats are “anti-science” because they won’t simply concede that Blacks are dumber than whites; support for such barbaric practices as “torture warrants”; and unabashed, good old fashioned anti-Semitism when they think no one is looking.

When vile stuff like this bubbles freely to the surface, all but erasing the distinction between conservatives and fascists, we know just how badly the political waters have been polluted. To extend that particular metaphor in the light of this new call to disenfranchise social assistance recipients, it seems to be high time to disinfect the well before the disease is completely out of control.