So, in that most famous 1934 Nazi rally's opening speech, Rudolph Hess, Hitler's deputy Fuhrer, said that, "Thanks to [Hitler's] leadership, Germany will become the homeland. Homeland for all Germans in the world."
Of course, that's the translated version. "Homeland" in German is "heimat."
"Heimat" was used throughout the reign of Hitler and throughout World War II.
Nazi's loved the word, and attached it to everything they could, like the "Nazi Homeland Defense Forces," or the Heimwehr.
But, immediately after Nazi Germany was defeated and World War II came to a close, the word all but disappeared from German vernacular.
Post-war Germans were ashamed to use a word that stood for such terrible things.
Fast-forward nearly 70 years, and while Germans still won't say it, the word "homeland" is everywhere in the United States. Bush and Cheney rolled it out in a big way after 9/11, and our media managed to completely ignore the dark history of the word.
But it's a history that carries with it a danger -- the danger that we may begin to think of ourselves as an "exceptional" people, a "race apart" because of our national identification. That we may start to think of the United States as a "homeland."
It's time to retire this artifact of the Nazi era.
Let's rename the Department of "Homeland" Security, and remove from the United States' self-description this dark, strange and creepy term.
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