The Glade 4.0

Well, maybe if your country weren't being worn as a hat by my country you wouldn't be so dismissive of the value of citizenship.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Is it unethical to break an unenforced law?

Um, yes? Knowing something is illegal yet you wouldn't get caught, and doing it anyway, rather than respecting the law? Relying on your own internal sense of morality (one might say "ethics?") to determine your actions regardless of the legal repercussions (or lack, thereof) for you? Right or wrong on this subject, that's pretty much the definition of 'unethical.'

You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. The reason you want US Citizenship is for employment purposes. To get employed in places where citizenship is a requirement. But you do not want to leave your German citizenship behind.

This does not count as duress. You are choosing to abandon the country you currently have citizenship with for a personal reason. Making this requires you to sacrifice. Then going and saying it was under duress is not only a complete fabrication (since you willingly renounced citizenship not because the US required it but because a company you wanted to be part of did), and is unethical... but it also makes the person doing it a complete **** scumbag.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Law, in-and-of itself, has no merit. Countries can make no just claims on the conditions and servitude of men to any degree. You owe no one anything. Do what best suits your sovereign self, and do it proudly.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I don't really care about archaic constructs like citizenship and patriotism. I find them rather childish, to be honest. My reaction is to the insincerity of the oath being given. I don't care for that.

Exactly. There is no virtue in obeying law for the sake of obeying law. Law has no moral authority associated with it.

And don't pretend "Ethical" and "Moral" are different things. They are just different ways of saying "Doing what is right." Right is entirely subjective. Do what is right in your own eyes. At the end of the day, its your own conscience you must live with, not mine, not Rynar's, not Diamondeye's, not Farsky's. Do what you think is best.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I've never been tempted.

Well, if you live in the UK, as your avatar would suggest, no wonder. You've a much cooler flag than we.

Oooh, speaking of flags...

He's in California.

Speaking of the UK flag...

http://satwcomic.com/english-flag

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Archaic constructs require archaic oaths.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

It's much like the pledge of allegiance... you say it because you have to. Like FarSky said, citizenship and nationalism are archaic and there is no need for it anymore except it's easier to keep the status quo.

Ahhh... hahahaha...ahhhhhhhhhhhhh...ummmmmmmmmmmmmm...hrmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

An interesting question. Not necessarily. That is:

I wouldn't go that far. A system of law may itself be unethical. Is it unethical to disregard the laws of oppressive dictatorship, for instance? Or even if the legal/government system itself is more or less ethical/just, individual laws might not be. Or to use a familiar example: do you lie to the Nazis about hiding Jews?

However in this case, that's all basically irrelevant. As Khross said, it doesn't really matter whether you agree with the naturalization process or not. At the point that you've given your word to do X, it's unethical by any (in my opinion) reasonable system of ethics not to do X. Of course, in the general form, "my oath/promise/etc. was coerced" is a perfectly valid argument for breaking it. However, the oath of naturalization is not coerced. No one holds a gun to your head and forces you to become a U.S. citizen. That's a choice that you made of your own volition, and the terms of that agreement are well known to both parties before the agreement is made. At that point, it really doesn't matter whether those terms are agreeable, just, or even sane -- you voluntarily signed on the dotted line.

Or basically this:

And this:

Maybe laying it on a little thick, but that's pretty much the crux of it, ethically speaking.

And now for something completely different:


Just to clarify, the requirement for presidential eligibility (time-travelers and/or zombies not withstanding) is actually that you are a "natural born citizen". Whether "natural born citizen" is synonymous with just plain "born citizen" or "citizen at birth" is a more complicated issue; one which I'm not well-versed enough in legislative history to answer.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

This was clarified in my Nationality Law class. John McCain and Barack Obama are both examples of this principle in play. McCain was eligable to run for President because he was born a citizen - that is, a natural-born citizen - of the U.S. despite the physical location of his birth. Obama, on the other hand, would need to have been physically born in the U.S. because his mother did not meet the requirements for a single USC parent to transfer citizenship at the time of his birth, as Khross has pointed out several times.

Had his father been a USC, or his mother met the requirements, whether he was born in Kenya would be a moot point, although let's not go off on the tangent of where he was born again. I'm using this purely to illustrate the misconception. You are correct, however, that the exact words are "natural born citizen." There is no overt requirement in terms of physical location.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Its not unethical to break any law if the law itself is immoral.

Its often immoral to follow laws.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

And if by breaking the immoral law you commit a seperate immoral act with your result? Its linked together. Work to change the law. Refuse to participate. Scam the system to take from others for personal gain? Nah that's crap. If BP his behind an unenforced law like is being proposed here there would be a **** storm.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Sounds suspiciously like an assertion of "two wrongs make a right" to me.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Sounds suspiciously like an assertion that "the law itself has some inherent moral value" to me, which is bullshit. Laws & Legality have no direct connection to morality.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Precisely. Taskiss you're saying breaking the law is always morally wrong. Would you hide a family of Jews from the Nazis? It is illegal to protect them against their would be murderers I remind you.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Man, watching Elmarnieh makes absurdly irrational arguments because he cannot divorce his political position from a situation is awesome.

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There is a long history of civil disobedience to unjust laws. Taking an oath you don't believe is not a political act of civil disobedience. It is a fraudulent crime of commission..

Oh, and Godwin's invoked.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I'm glad someone is still entertained. The novelty rather wore off several years ago for me.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Contrary to your opinion, DE, Elmo is very often thoroughly logical in his posts and opinions. In this case, however, he's blinded by ludicrous levels of ideological flag-waving.

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No, he's really not. Elmo primarily makes on-line posts which most often are some holier-than-thou pronouncement on the imagined personal failings of others here for not agreeing with him. Hence why I've had him on ignore

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."