Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's recent political ad has a supporter say that "Heidi voted seven times for tougher border security, and to arrest and deport illegal aliens who commit crimes." She should be reeling with virulent cognitive dissonance for this statement. The word "illegal" already means possible criminal behavior, and in fact crossing America's border without permission is a misdemeanor the first time, a felony each time after that.

Either Heitkamp is saying that she would arrest and deport all illegals in the country as the lawbreakers that they are, contradicting her support for sanctuary cities that shelter them; or she's saying that we should pursue only illegals who commit violent crimes, in which case she wants to wait for illegals to murder, rape or mug someone first before we deport them.

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Such is the stand of those who despise their own culture. "Xenophobia"--fear of the strange or different-is the term used to ceaselessly pummel those who think America should have borders. There's an opposite term, however: "Oikophobia," which is fear of the familiar. Oikophobes are those who do everything they can to overthrow their own surroundings, so disgusted they are with the trappings of their lives. The question is: Why do they hate America?

It should be clear by now that diversity weakens, not strengthens, a country. Mindless parroting of the concept doesn't change reality. Any place on earth where significant but disparate populations exist side by side is bound to have friction and turmoil. It doesn't seem to matter much what the difference is: language, religion, race, ethnicity, you name it. The Quebecois threaten to secede from Canada every 20 years or so, the Walloons and the Flemish in Belgium don't get along with each other, Protestants and Catholics still grumble in Ireland, Muslims and Jews-well, you know, Malays discriminate against the ethnic Chinese in their midst, the Hutus butchered the Tutsis in a wholesale slaughter, even the rivalry between North and South Junior High schools in Moorhead (yes, I go that far back) counts as a trivial example. People side with their own.

Corporations claim to desire diversity to reach out to the world, but homogeneous China and Japan are the second and third largest economies in the world, with China number one in purchasing power parity and gaining on us in GDP.

Here's what Thomas Jefferson thought of diversity: concerned that a large influx of immigrants from European countries could change America for the worse, he wrote that they "would bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth..." The astute reader will notice that Jefferson isn't even referring to race as the problem in this example, but of the culture immigrants would bring with them.

America's founders well understood what makes a country tick. John Jay wrote that America was blessed to be "a people...speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." This is what oikophobes want us to give up.

Nelson lives in Casselton, N.D., and is a regular contributor to The Forum’s opinion page.