"Homeland" Security

The name of this new department sticks in my craw. It's reminiscent of das Vaterland, which is German for "the Fatherland."

I've been meaning to write about this, but the people at Reason Magazine beat me to it recently. Wikipedia has some discussion of fatherland, motherland, and homeland.

I think it was a deliberate invocation of Nazi obedience by our current administration. Didn't we already have a Department of Defense? Doesn't that department have lots of civilian employees? I thought coordination of intelligence and response efforts was a problem.

Domestic Security would say it less imperialistically; but I'd rather see the Department of Homeland Security merged into the Department of Defense.


Let's see, that'd be God (Gott), Emperor (Kaiser), and Fatherland, all teamed up like, "religious" conservatives, imperial Bushites, and the 9/11 Overscare.