[iwar] [fc:The.Trouble.With."Homeland"]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-15 15:28:43
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 15:28:43 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:The.Trouble.With."Homeland"]
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The Trouble With "Homeland"
It's a creepy, morale-sapping word. Let's drop it.
By Mickey Kaus
Posted Friday, June 14, 2002, at 1:38 AM PT

This morning, Peggy Noonan delivers an excellent, subtle OpinionJournal
column on why Rudolph Giuliani should head the new "Department of Homeland
Security." She notes, for example, that journalists by now have a vested
interest making the heroic Giuliani a success, which would help him succeed.
Of course, they'll never get the chance, because Bush isn't going to appoint
Giuliani. (Even so, Noonan argues, pushing him for the job is a
win-win-win-win position for Democrats). But the main public service Noonan
performs is to put on the table the issue of the word "homeland." She thinks
it doesn't work. She's right. "Homeland" is a terrible word! Let's say it
now before it's too late.

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I know I'm not alone in this -- I've heard enough grumbling from friends who
don't want to be unpatriotic but can't help cringing and wondering out loud
why this suddenly became a word we all had to use. Noonan touches on the
main problems, but it's worth reviewing them in detail.

1) It's Un-American: "Homeland," as Noonan notes, isn't a word Americans
have been used to using. It's word Germans have been used to using.
"Heimat," a common German word, means home -- and not home as in "home and
hearth" either (that's "heim"). "Heimat" means "home" as in a place or
nation that's home. "Heimatland" is the literal analog of "homeland," as I
understand it. It's not specifically a Nazi word -- it's a general patriotic
and sentimental word. It was used during World War I, for example. My
mother, who was born in Germany but fled at age 10, can sing from memory a
pre-Hitler song with "Heimatland" in it. Still, Nazi or not, the word is
uncomfortably Teutonic-sounding. (And you don't think the Nazis appropriated
it?) My raw sentiments are these: I'm an American, not a German. My father
fought in a bloody war so I wouldn't have to be a German. Why is the Bush
administration telling me I need to be German now?

"Homeland" is un-American in another way: it explicitly ties our sentiments
to the land, not to our ideas. Logically, this step makes no sense
(presumably we want to stop terrorism even if it targets Americans and
American institutions abroad). It also misses the exceptional American
contribution that's worth defending. People throughout history have felt
sentimental attachment to their land. We're sentimentally attached to
something less geographic: i.e., freedom. Didn't Ronald Reagan make this
point with some regularity?

2) It's too new: Why ask us to suddenly start spouting an unfamiliar phrase
in the name of patriotism? That in itself has a Big Brotherish aspect, or at
least a disturbingly phony PR aspect. We know 9/11 was a big change. And
maybe there's an advantage to giving people a constant linguistic reminder
that something big has changed. But I'd argue we need more to be reminded of
the familiar, old virtues we're defending (admittedly on a new, more
horrifying planet). We're disoriented enough already. President Bush won me
over, in the days after 9/11, precisely because he wasn't so disoriented
that he lost sight of the old American (and human, and masculine) virtues.
We need a word that conveys and embodies those trusty things, not one that
sounds like we've bought into some fancy new security-consultant's lingo.

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3) It's creepy: Police and intelligence agents are partly, inherently,
scary. When they honestly and openly call themselves "police' and
"intelligence agents," they build trust and remind you why they're there and
(more important) why you should cooperate with them. When the police start
talkiing about kirche and kinder and get all mushy and sentimental, they get
truly frightening, and start to remind you of Robert Duvall's character, the
fascistic commander, in that awful movie, The Handmaid's Tale.

This isn't just an aesthetic issue. Morale is important in any war. If
"homeland" becomes officially enshrined, I predict it will cause a
non-trivial loss of morale -- mainly among Democrat-leaning, non-Bush-voters
like me, true. But there are a lot of us. Our morale counts too, because the
anti-terror effort will need our support, too. You could even argue that our
morale is more crucial, since it's our morale that's most likely to slip.
Red state voters will be with Bush no matter what he calls his new
department. It's the blue state voters he needs to keep in line, marching in
the same direction.

If "homeland" is the wrong word, what's the right word? The problem, of
course, is that the right word is taken. The right word is "defense." In a
linguistically honest government, what's now the Department of Defense would
become the Department of War, which is the best description of what that
institution is, and the projected "Department of Homeland Security" would be
called the Department of Defense, which is the best description of what it
is. But there's even less chance of that happening than there is of Bush
appointing Giuliani to head it.

So what's wrong with "domestic security"? It gets the point across, without
pretentious and disturbing PR overtones. It's the phrase ex-Senators Warren
Rudman and Gary Hart use when they're not babbling about "homeland." Noonan,
for her part, has asked readers to send in suggestions (I assume to the
response link at the bottom of her page). She promises to forward the ideas
to Bush aide Karen Hughes.

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