Robert Wilkes at Divided We Fall:
In America the people are sovereign. That’s a premise we can all agree on, right? See! Civility isn’t so hard. We agree already! Well, no… It is actually quite hard, as we all know, and it’s getting worse. If civility continues to erode, it might destroy our democracy.
Richard Farkas, professor of political science at DePaul University, gets credit for the following construct:
CIVILITY ⇒ DIALOGUE ⇒ COMPROMISE ⇒ DEMOCRACY
The thesis is democracy requires compromise, compromise requires dialogue and dialogue requires civility.