Rude Democracy?

In her book "Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics" professor Susan Herbst makes the case against the lack of civility that is overpopulating public speech, electoral politics and new cycles.

An admirer of the United States republic like Alexis De Tocqueville noticed the tendency of majorities to abuse minorities back on the early days 

Doctor Robert Watson, from Lynn  University warns about a rise of lack of civility in this particular era:

And even experienced pollsters like Frank Luntz find incivility in focus groups of angry voters that copy the behavior of anchormans like Keith Olberman or Sean Hannity (this clip from his show)

Once again, newscasters and pollsters tend to blame voters for exhibiting behaviors extracted from their shows.

The best way of reverting this vicious cycle -attacks and name-calling beget the same back- is displaying civility in written, spoken and visual speech.

There are, however, respectable dissenters, like Christopher Hutchins, who advocated for the license to offend as part of the First Amendment rights:

 Although his concept of "offense" was not the same as that exhibited by Luntz's voters panel or our 2016 Republican and general election debates.

Nor was Hitchens in charge of managing anything else but his own pen or mouth instead of a 350 million-strong nation with a Civil War in its recent past not entirely resolved. Or a public university handling a Milos Yanopoulos or Anne Coulter event.

What is the right point? Here I might add for consideration this remarkable panel on controlling hate speech on campus among law professors from Universities of Chicago, Princeton and Harvard.:

As I myself I'm making up my mind about this topic, I found these sources to be very helpful.

Hope they are for you as well.