Half a century ago, Tom Lehrer, our iconic musical satirist, paid ironic tribute to National Brotherhood Week. In introducing his cracked paean to tolerance, Lehrer asserted that ‘I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that.’ His grievance is all too common. We have resided for some time in an age that frets about hate speech, but when does distaste become hatred? And is sharp and personal talk bad for the polity? The shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords temporarily invigorated the debate over civility, but such moments have a way of not lasting. That was so January. Biting discourse draws attention and motivates both supporters and opponents.

In the immediate aftermath of the Tucson killings, some on the left focused their attention on those in the Tea Party who expressed vivid – and yes, offensive – animus for President Obama. There surely are those whose colorful language hides an absence of mindfulness. But, as conservatives knew well, their time for grievance would come soon. After all, we have a United States senator who titled his literary effort, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. And there was the backbench Democrat from Memphis who compared Republican tactics to Nazi propaganda. Hitler would have George Soros’ wealth if he could receive a tiny royalty for each use of his name or image.

Even more dramatic is the boisterous crowd of teachers on the mall in Madison, Wisconsin. Protesters are fighting for collective bargaining rights, and in the process compare their newly elected governor, Scott Walker, to Hosni Mubarak and worse. Others will judge the justice of the Badgers’ cause, but who has taught these demonstrators about the villains of history? By the way, as an Illinois resident, I welcome the fleeing Democratic state senators and urge them to pay our newly increased income tax, part of which will go to teachers’ pay.

The question is how concerned should we be with Governor Walker’s and President Obama’s detractors? What is hate speech? Is it just lusty talk? Is it something to reject and to fear? Or, is it the cornerstone of our rough-and-tumble republic, a democracy that our founders would recognize? When discussed by scholars, such as Jeffrey Goldfarb in Civility and Subversion, civility in the public sphere is often linked to the responsibilities of mainstream intellectuals (Walter Lippmann or John Dewey), but it can equally be extended to C. Wright Mills, Thomas Sowell, or Frances Fox Piven. These thinkers and writers have responsibilities to both lasting discourse as well as to immediate change. But issues of civility and incivility apply also to those who stand outside ivied gates – the Keith Olbermanns, Glenn Becks, Frank Riches, and Bill Kristols of this world.

In fact, there is very little evidence that impassioned rhetoric leads to violence. Admittedly not none, as the assassination of Lincoln, the beating of Senator Seward, or the murder of Yitzhak Rabin reminds us. But objections often seem more aesthetic than criminological. The transposition of scorn and dislike into hatred by those who object to hot talk is misleading, even when we are talking about what has been termed ‘group libel.’ A person who finds African-Americans witless, Jews mercenary, or bankers heartless denigrates the group, but perhaps the heated emotion of hatred does not apply. Maybe they don’t hate, but just scorn, which is different from hate.

As Tom Lehrer breezily suggested, objections to hate speech, when it comes to characterizing a group, can themselves be labeled hate speech. When examining objections to individuals the problem grows thornier still. Someone can object deeply to the president, any president, accusing him of leading the nation into an inescapable quagmire, a world of fascist or communist sympathies. Surely these claims reveal real dislike. As Emily Eisenberg and I once pointed out in comparing reactions to Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton (Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, in their sexualized identities), some leaders raise ire, often less for what they have done, than for who they are.

But it is hard to pin down hatred. A syllogism suggests that I judge critically, you dislike, and they hate. Still, even if one can find such hatred, perhaps we should see the commitment to discourse as opposed to violent action, as within the boundaries of civil society. The allegiance to debate reflects the principles of the Founders, it doesn’t deny them. Being engaged in left or right disruption – talk or action – can be handled by a confident society. Yes, legislators, justices, and government officials must find grounds for reaching agreement, but they can do this – and over centuries have done this – within a welter of voices. The more some say that things have changed, the more that we can say that they have remained the same.

So I am not dismayed about the absence of a congenial debate – even while I wish that those with whom I disagree would sit down and shut up. Throughout our history, tough talk has been common as Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bush pere and fils can attest. Fiery talk doesn’t lead to fire, it leads to commitment and, sometimes, to social change. As sociologist William Gamson has pointed out, militant social movements tend to be more effective than mousy ones. Get up on the soapbox and shout, as long as there are those who are more pragmatic to do the hard lifting of compromise. Hosni Mubarak is just like . . . fill in the blank.