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1. It's a nice sentiment, but I don't think we *really* want to get Talmudic for a few reasons:
2. First, there are numerous instances of Talmudic Sages insulting each other. Here's just one example from Hullin 95b (we just finished Hullin yesterday in Daf Yomi) 
3. Second, the Talmud has several categories of sectarians and heretics who are excluded from the discussion. Here's an exchange from Hullin 87a which is also, shall we say, impolite.
4. @DGreenbaum specifically refers to the disputes between Hillel and Shammai. I discuss these at length in my Sacred Slogans entry on "Eilu Va'eilu."
joshyuter.com/2018/09/14/spe…
joshyuter.com/2018/09/14/spe…
5. As I demonstrate, it's not exactly a model for pluralism or even respectful debate. Here's how a passage in the Yerushalmi describes it:
6. The reason why the Sages were able to have the debates they did is because they all agreed on certain fundamental principles of religious authority and all that goes with it. Those who challenge or deny those fundamentals are actively excluded from the conversation.
7. So many of the debates today are over fundamentals, which is why people keep talking past each other (to put it mildly). The best books which explore this are @JonHaidt's The Righteous Mind and Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions. (Read both)
8. You can have a debate when people agree with certain premises. When you don't have common ground, you have Twitter. \fin.
9. Addendum: Another point to consider is that at certain points, Talmudic discussions reached a point of finality (not always, most debates are left unresolved in the Talmud itself). But it means once a decision was made, it usually doesn't get relitigated.
10. What I see today is that people want to "have conversations" right up until the point they get their way. Only then is conversation supposed to stop because the topic has finally been "settled."
