Gore Vidal (2004) observed in the first decade of the twenty-first century that we no longer live in a state; we live in a Homeland. The Cold War is over, but the US national security state (supposedly called forth by the Cold War) is alive and well, fortified—now that the State Department is no longer sufficient—by its Department of Homeland Security. The rhetorical sleight of hand involved in this transposition of “state” into “Homeland” is not without precedent, and the 2001 Patriot Act is but the latest incident in a long history of state-sponsored countersubversion that predated the Cold War (Rogin 1987). Euphemisms for state (“Motherland,” “Fatherland,” _la patrie_) have long abounded, and so has the unwieldy and often inaccurate composite “nation-state.” Note also the substitution of “nation” for “state” in names such as United _Nations_ and the Inter_national_ Monetary Fund. The centrality of the state to the sphere of political activity seems self-evident to some thinkers. Prominent contemporary political theorist Quentin Skinner (1978), taking his cue from the writings of Max Weber, regards the very use of the word “state” as a confirmation of his thesis that the state—defined as the legitimate monopolizer of the means of violence—is foundational...