Michelle's Stasi

Michelle Malkin has proposed some kind of manifesto in which, well, everyone keeps an eye on the suspected "Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist" yes - even apologist - who might be in our midst. I'm not sure what the term "apologist" means in this context but one shudders to think how wide a net she could cast with it. Much of the response raised the spectre of the type found in dystopian novels.

A much better comparison might be made though to the past:

"It has been estimated that by the time the wall came down in 1989, the Stasi had 91,000 full-time employees and somewhere around 200,000 to 300,000 civilian informants (by comparison, Hitler's Germany had 30,000 Gestapo officers for the entire country)."

The Stasi (the East German secret police) were notorious for relying on civilian informants. Is this the kind of network that Ms. Malkin would like to build? There are all kinds of anecdotes about nosy neighbours who made other people's business their business in the old East Germany. One wonders what this sort of activity did to even the most basic social interactions. Everyone and everything could be held as suspect. Of course for a supporter of internment, this ought to be no big deal.