S04E14 – Immigrants and Culture

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we discuss immigration. The launching point for our discussion is a recent increase in murders and shootings in Sweden that are mostly stemming from gang battles between immigrants from Eastern European and predominantly Muslim countries. We discuss the violence and then explore to what extent that violence is tied to the cultures of the immigrants. That leads us to a general discussion of culture and whether some cultures are better than others. Josh and Tom ultimately argue that US culture is superior to those of all other countries while Ryan rejects that premise, arguing that culture is far too complex to evaluate on a hierarchical value scale. Ryan agrees that some cultural practices are bad or unethical (e.g., female genital mutilation) but cannot condemn entire cultures on the basis of one practice he finds objectionable.