General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Is it just me, or does anyone else object to calling the country of the USofA - America? [View all]Hekate
(90,633 posts)...with centuries of bloody European history.
"The people of the soil" referred not just to the peasantry, but to all those who worked land, owned land, possessed land, AND were the "right" religion and ethnicity. Other people had no right to be there except under a wary tolerance.
In Russian literature, the habit of referring to this or that character as a "rootless cosmopolite" was a none-too-veiled reference to Jews, who were not allowed to own land (though in the Pale they worked on it) and were inclined to fill economic niches in cities.
Throughout Western Europe this concept of who belonged where meant there always had to be an Other. It took hold hardest in some countries more than others (i.e. Germany).
We are different. We are Americans not solely by birth but by desire. Of course this is our home. But Dubya's sudden insertion of a term used by nations that were emphatically non-democratic, coupled with the passage of the USA PATRIOT ACT, seriously creeped me out.