When it was coined, patriotism was all the rage.

Yes, it is a weird name when looking externally. But it (like the PATRIOT act) is a product of the fear at the time.

And it's time to dump both of those creations.

You intuition is right, it's kinda creepy to native speakers of American english, too.

There was some discussion at the time, but not enough to modify the course of the barreling train in Washington DC that created the DHS.

Here's one example from 2002:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/kausfiles_sp...

I'm a native english speaker, and i always refer to it as "der Heimatsicherheitsdienst", has a more appropriate ring to it.

There are a great many native English speakers who make exactly the same association.

Absolutely. I always referred to it as 'Homeland Security, Comrade'. But that's pretty much what they were after, a totalitarian fascist government with 'total information awareness', so it makes perfect sense.

It's a euphemism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism

The US government uses typical propaganda tactics like this, grease up the names of their authoritarian bills to make them sound nice, when in fact they are usually quite sinister. For example, the Patriot Act includes provisions for torturing and spying on Americans.

That is happening almost in every country in the world. Privacy, freedom of speech, you name it. Blood was spilled to assure we have rights. Even though, most people are consistently waiving them and they seem not to care about it. How is it even possible? I'm perplexed by this.

That's something that really bothers me. I try to talk to people about this stuff and they honestly don't care, because it doesn't effect them yet.