Have you ever considered that what you consider "western values" are in fact values that emerge in a society that lives in conditions where there is political stability and economic opportunity? That people's "culture" is affected by the environment around them as a general pattern?
Yes, I have considered that. It doesn't appear to be true.
If it was, cases like Rahman's would not have happened. After moving from Bangladesh as a young person, and becoming surrounded by political stability and economic opportunity, he would have adopted western values and become an ordinary politician. So would the people in Tower Hamlets, which has a very large Bangladeshi immigrant population.
In fact what happened was this:
• He engaged in massive election fraud, including buying votes, organising large numbers of faked votes, bribery, buying support of local Bangladeshi TV channels, intimidating witnesses and doubling council funding to local Bengali charities in return for their political support.
• He did this so successfully that he won a local election that was found (years later) so riven with corruption that it was declared by a judge to be entirely void and would have to be re-run from scratch.
• He also gained votes by telling Muslim voters that his political opponent was racist and that voting for him was an "Islamic duty".
• He was kicked out of the Labour party for having links with an extremist group.
• He benefited from a group of "enforcers", people attached to youth organisations funded by his council, who would visit and intimidate any Bangladeshi who spoke out against the mayor. This included threatening to burn down the houses of witnesses during the corruption trial.
• He has also been accused of extensive mortgage fraud and tax evasion.
Corruption, bribery, intimidation of voters, stuffing ballot boxes, buying political support, exploiting religion and race to gain support - these are all the sorts of behaviours strongly associated with third world countries like Bangladesh, but they showed up in the UK in the modern era too, even with people who moved as children.
If values were created by the environment, then this wouldn't happen (unless you consider the cultural effects of immigrants who pool together in the same areas to be able to overwhelm the cultural effects of the new host country).
Having interacted with immigrants from many different places, I find for a vast majority of them, the environment does in fact determine their culture. Are there a few for whom it doesn't? Sure. In the same way there are criminals even among people who grow up in such an environment.
I would love to visit this magical place you describe where ordinary politicians are the bedrock whence we judge the morality of the underlying society.
> Corruption, bribery, intimidation of voters, stuffing ballot boxes, buying political support, exploiting religion and race to gain support
Sounds like business as usual in Chicago...joking, of course I'm joking...
I've considered this and deemed it to be false. A great counter example is Imperial China around 1300-1400AD. They were fantastically wealthy and politically stable yet "western values" did not develop.
