That worked as long as both sides ran by the gentlemans agreement that you debate and let the best argument win.
As with many things, that worked until people forgot why the argument (or indeed why it is called a gentleman) was created in the first place and so tore it up for political points.
I mean, if you're somehow under the false impression that people were more cordial in these disagreements in the past, I don't know what to tell you.
One of the largest popular phenomenons in the new millenium is a musical based on a politician being shot by another politician. Fist fights have been a regular occurrence by members of congress since our inception. We show pictures to every schoolchild in the US of violence used during the 1960s Civil Rights movement.
I'd also wonder, how the concept of "cancel culture" impacts that at all. Not once have I seen someone getting "cancelled"(which itself is nebulous enough that more than half of those it is perpetrated against have better careers after than before) remove any inability for public discourse to continue about what they did.
Even the article from yesterday, about a man who experienced harassment for admitting to a problem he'd supposedly fixed long ago, largely became a conversation about the issue at hand.
Essentially, I'm wondering why so many are convinced that someone else's use of their free speech so negatively impacts their own.
As with many things, that worked until people forgot why the argument (or indeed why it is called a gentleman) was created in the first place and so tore it up for political points.