the homeland?
I knew, everybody knew, that we have a 'Department of Homeland Security' around here; and when I think back, I did find that kind of an odd name when the Department was still a new thing. Now, of course, we hardly think about it, hearing the name just about every day. On the radio this morning, though, I heard someone refer to things we need to do to 'defend the homeland,' and let me tell you it sounded very strange.
If were to be entirely honest, I'd have to say that my 'homeland' is eastern Massachusetts, or at best New England. The United States is my country, sure, but when you start talking about national identification with folks from Georgia and Montana and Hawaii, well, I'm not sure. And I wonder how anyone else can have that sort of identifiation, too: it's one thing to rejoice in our democratic freedoms, which really do set us apart from most of the countries in the world, but as a nation of immigrants we don't need to worry about things like sacred soil and all that nonsense. Now, it could very well be that they called it the Dept of H. Security because 'National Security' was already taken by another department (they've got a few of them over there in Washington, I understand it), but the fact that some people are starting to take the term seriously makes me a little nervous.