Time for the U.S. to Dump the Word "Homeland"
http://www.alternet.org/time-us-dump-word-homelandIt's time to do away with the word "homeland."
As the situation with ISIS continues to escalate, and as worries about terrorist attacks on US soil continue to spread, we're hearing the term "homeland" mentioned more and more.
Ever since it first stole the spotlight with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the months after 9/11, the term "homeland" has become ingrained in US society.
But, as Chris Matthews pointed out on his MSNBC show recently, there's something strange and creepy about the term.
Matthews said that, "It's a term used by the neocons, they love it. It suggests something strange to me. Like who else are we defending except America? Why don't you just say 'America'? Why doesn't [Obama] say we defended against attacks against this country? As if we're facing some existential Armageddon threat from these people. Do you buy the phrase 'homeland'? I never heard it growing up, never heard it in my adulthood. It's a new word. Why are we using it? Is there some other place we're defending? What are we talking about when we say 'homeland'? What's it about?"
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there's something strange and creepy about Chris Matthews.
You think that because we are less specific in our targeting and death bringing that there is much moral distinction left between the foreign policy of the Bush Doctrine era and Nazi Germany?
National Socialism rejected the concept of class struggle, opposed ideas of equality and international solidarity, and sought to defend private property. Sound at all familiar yet?
You think there's much distinction between 'Lebensraum' ("living space"
and "defending freedom"?
History is not going to view it differently...we are a diffuse version of the scourge of the 20th century and ultimately, we will be judged accordingly.
I despise that word. It smacks of uber-patriotism and neocon B.S. I refuse to say it.
We managed to live successfully as a country for hudreds of years without it, and we don't need it now. We used to use the word "national," as in National Anthem. It's a wonder they haven't renamed it "Homeland Anthem." It used to be "national security." What about "national debt?" I believe the PNAC (read: "Karl Rove" decided to put this "Homeland" into use to subconscously create more fear into people and thus more manipulation. It was no longer our "nation" that we would defend, it was our "homes," as if any enemy was standing right outside our doors. It helps to underly a sense of emergency.
From the first, I saw it as it was meant to be: Marketing 101, to sell their agenda to a shocked people. It's all manipulation.
with phrases such as homeland, motherland of fatherland. I've used the former two somewhat romantically and innocently in several contexts, mostly out of country. I agree with you that this phrase should be buried until such time that it's possible to actually take it back, though.
Unless you'd like to state that such entities are just constructs, in which you'd have valid point, but the discussion sort of moves on to a different 'sphere' then 
And when Jews and Palestinians each talk about wanting their respective homelands (as in "a Palestinian homeland" or a "Jewish Homeland" are they blind to the fact they're evoking Nazism?
Or does the word, which dates back hundreds of years in terms of its etymology, and which is often cited by proponents of the right of self determination, have more than the one meaning some here seem to think it has?
Never liked the word police.
