Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics. Susan Herbst. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010. 216 pp.

Like an exciting classroom discussion, Rude Democracy opens with the shock of a counterintuitive challenge. Author Susan Herbst suggests that the incivility so rife in our politics can be a valid tactic, and that condemning it outright is “banal and unsophisticated.”

From there, she constructs a nuanced argument that some incivility, but not too much, stimulates healthy debate. Rather than wasting time trying to drum it out of politics, she maintains, we should educate our students and citizenry to deal more thoughtfully with the inevitable discord.  [Read more...]