# Why does the use of "homeland" bother me so much? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 17, 2007, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132 "2007-07-17T14:50:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/41 "2007-07-17T19:11:03Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay] Even if you don’t like the word, isn’t that what the DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE is for? [/QUOTE] I see where you’re confused. It’s like this, you understand: The Department of Defense is for **of** fense. Now the Department of Homeland Security, see that’s for **de** fense. Our National **Guard**? Well see, we send them out to **attack**. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Well, we’re not sure _what_ that’s for. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/42 "2007-07-17T19:21:26Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] And the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Well, we’re not sure _what_ that’s for. [/QUOTE] Pork distribution/management to Federal friends during emergencies. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/43 "2007-07-17T19:27:10Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] And the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Well, we’re not sure _what_ that’s for. [/QUOTE] It’s actually Federal Emergency _Spin_ Management Agency, but the Spin function is silent. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/44 "2007-07-17T19:28:41Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] I see where you’re confused. It’s like this, you understand: The Department of Defense is for **of** fense. Now the Department of Homeland Security, see that’s for **de** fense. Our National **Guard**? Well see, we send them out to **attack**. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Well, we’re not sure _what_ that’s for. [/QUOTE] 😃 Do you write stand-up? That was beautiful. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/45 "2007-07-17T19:35:18Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] What about Hampshire? [/QUOTE] Why would we want to call it the Department of Hampshire Security? And didn’t you just say you’d prefer that it be eliminated? ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/46 "2007-07-17T19:37:13Z")
[QUOTE=Terrifel] 😃 Do you write stand-up?. [/QUOTE] No, it only _seems_ that way to my clients. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/47 "2007-07-17T19:45:06Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] And I hope she eliminates it. [/QUOTE] Hear, hear! ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Call_Me_Shirley)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/48 "2007-07-17T19:46:11Z")
Let’s just get it over with and call it the Ministry of Peace. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/49 "2007-07-17T19:47:44Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] > [@](#): > > Originally posted by **featherlou** > Disregard the danger at your own peril. I would say it doesn’t make any difference to me, but you guys are awfully close and you have a very large army and no compunctions about invading other countries. Awfully close by what measure? [/QUOTE] How about the measure of sharing a several-thousand miles long border? She _is_ in Canada. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/50 "2007-07-17T19:55:12Z")
Oh, but I agree with **OtakuLoki** that a President Hillary Clinton is not likely to remove the department, much as we might hope. Maybe she’d rename it, and maybe Congress will grow a pair and take away some of the pseudo-fascist overtones, not to mention restore its own time-honored position as a check and balance to the executive branch. After this administration, the executive branch is due to be knocked down a peg or two. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/51 "2007-07-17T20:49:42Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] I sincerely hope that one of the first orders of business for the next administration will be to change the name of “Homeland Security.” [/QUOTE] My problem is with the “Security” part. A “Ministry of Security” is a common name for a police state’s secret (anti-political-dissent) police force. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/52 "2007-07-17T21:33:13Z")
[QUOTE=Lightnin’] Nah, you guys should be just fine. You don’t have any readily available oil reserves that we need, and as far as I know, you’ve never threatened to kill a sitting US president’s father. Now, if we find ourselves in need of snow and/or poutine, well… all bets are off. [/QUOTE] I don’t know if you’re whooshing me or not - [Canada is the number one importer of oil to the United States.](http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html) As for threatening to kill someone’s father, well, we might talk about him behind his back, but outright threats just aren’t our style. And you can’t have our snow and poutine. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/53 "2007-07-17T21:36:20Z")
What?! How can Canada IMPORT oil TO the United States? What kind of a scam are you Canucks running up there? This means war. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/54 "2007-07-17T21:45:41Z")
[QUOTE=Zeldar] What I come in to say. Then there’s reference to Homeland in the less offensive _Edelweiss_ from _The Sound of Music_. Overtones of Nazi Germany, more precisely. [/QUOTE] This is where we need to remember that, in _The Sound of Music_, “homeland” is Austria _independent of the Nazis_, the one that is about to get trampled. The Nazi party used “fatherland”, not “homeland”, to refer to Germany. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/55 "2007-07-17T21:57:56Z")
[QUOTE=straight man] This is where we need to remember that, in _The Sound of Music_, “homeland” is Austria _independent of the Nazis_, the one that is about to get trampled. The Nazi party used “fatherland”, not “homeland”, to refer to Germany. [/QUOTE] Thanks for spotting my poorly word post. The “homeland” reference in _Edelweiss_ is a positive statement and evokes genuine patriotism and even a sense of loss perhaps. However, the connection with the song is a wartime (Nazi rise to power at least) theme and thus it dovetails in time (and memory) with the “Fatherland” connotations of the Third Reich. I find it difficult to separate the two sentiments. To me, the Homeland appeal is more negative than the Edelweiss one and it borrows from the Fatherland overtone. Unless the PTB recognized those overtones and hoped to evoke them by choice of the name, they did a sloppy job of selecting a name. As I perceive it, Country or Nation and maybe even Continent would be less emotionally loaded than Homeland and would serve to avoid the Nazi connection. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/56 "2007-07-17T22:05:20Z")
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99] How about the measure of sharing a several-thousand miles long border? She _is_ in Canada. [/QUOTE] Butter. Denmark. ---
**Author:** ![Crescend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Crescend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crescend)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/57 "2007-07-17T22:14:30Z")
[QUOTE=Zeldar] As I perceive it, Country or Nation and maybe even Continent would be less emotionally loaded than Homeland and would serve to avoid the Nazi connection. [/QUOTE] Yeah, but they’d sound weird in the context of a departmental name. “Department of Country Security” - nonstarter. “Department of National Security” - taken by an existing agency. “Department of National Defense” - taken by two existing agencies. “Department of Continental Security” - Hawaii, Canada, and Mexico wouldn’t be too happy. “Department of Counterterrorism” - maybe, but calling it that would invite criticism of a too-narrow mission for a cabinet-level department. “Department of Home Defense” - again, interagency clash, and it sounds like a department in charge of everyone keeping a shotgun next to the bed. “Department of Internal Security” - if people didn’t like “Homeland Security”, imagine how they’d react to this gem. “Department of Civil Defense” - another interagency naming clash, and has very little to do with the original Civil Defense program. What else would you call this thing? It’s supposed to handle immigration (INS was rolled into it), research in asymmetric warfare defense (it has its own research funding agency), airport security, public health, FEMA, coast guard, nuclear materials detection, internet stability, and a [whole bunch of other stuff](http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/structure/index.shtm). It was originally conceived as an lean interdepartmental coordinator to boost government efficiency, and grew into an unwieldy conglomerate that took over the roles of DOD, DOE, DOT, CDC, USCG, INS, FEMA, and even more alphabet soup. I’d say that “Homeland Security” is a remarkably apt name for the department. It is vague, can be spun to mean nearly anything, and is used to justify an ever-larger budget. The only department with a vaguer name is the Department of the Interior - and, now that I think about it, DHS could probably have been neatly folded into DOI. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/58 "2007-07-17T22:27:38Z")
**Crescend** , you raise legitimate concerns and I’m not jealous of having the decision to make. All I was trying to say was in response to the thread title. It leaves me with negative connotations that make me feel uneasy. I suggest that rather than defending the choice as “what else could we call it” we should have some people who are clever enough to avoid the negative connotations to do the naming. If we can’t find such a group of name-choosers, I suggest we have another problem. What if we decide in the near future to abandon the term President for the head of our government and decide (after some process like you have suggested) to adopt the one that the government selects and it turns out to be Fuhrer. Do you imagine the connotations would go away because “we did the best we could”? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/59 "2007-07-17T23:52:46Z")
There is no Department of National Security. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132/60 "2007-07-18T00:10:34Z")
[QUOTE=Don’t Call Me Shirley] Let’s just get it over with and call it the Ministry of Peace. [/QUOTE] No. It should be named for the thing we are defending and the thing of which “they” are jealous and the thing we are surrendering to keep it out of “their” hands: Department of Freedom. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-use-of-homeland-bother-me-so-much/412132.md?page=4)