> usually the tool that societies reach for to kill ideas is to kill the people that hold them. 99 times out of 100.

That's not normally the tool that democratic societies use. The US didn't wholesale kill its segregationists in the 60s. Western Europe didn't kill its Nazis, or its Stalinists. Ayn Rand wasn't pushed down a stairs. I'm trying to think of an example of where a modern democratic country _did_ do this. We didn't kill the misogynists or the racists or the homophobes, we just let them slowly fade into irrelevance. It's not done yet; it's a process.

Societies who do try to kill off bad or opposing ideologies rarely actually do that well with it. How well did the Soviet Union really do with getting rid of its ethno-nationalists, say?

Edit: I suppose one example would be covert action, there has obviously been some of that. Rounding people up wholesale doesn't really happen, though.

Indigenous people in Canada, Australia, and the United States were basically rounded up and killed (or re-educated, depending on the century).

Not sure how that's substantially different from the soviets rounding up the ethno-nationalists?

I mentioned modern democracy. I'd have serious trouble considering those to be modern democracies at the time. Universal suffrage seems like a minimum requirement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc... was still expanding during the 1940's and 1950's when most everyone (except indigenous peoples) could vote.

"We stop killing off / imprisoning people once we give them the right to vote" seems a little too tautological.

Pretty big exception. No universal suffrage; not a proper modern democracy. They're pretty new, really.

Felons can't vote, today.

In the US, no. Bit of an oddity; most other democratic countries don't do that.

> Ayn Rand wasn't pushed down a stairs.

The thought of this was just way too satisfying...

I'd suggest doing some reading on labour history within the United States.

Or labour history back further...in fact, I specifically want you to look at Europe ~1790-1855 around when the craft guilds collapsed and mass protests started happening.

Police, as we know them today, were literally created in this period in response to these crowds of lower-to-middle class workers who were disrupting society.

They had to be because the armies that were sent in were ordered to shoot people in these crowds...and you had things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

>usually the tool that societies reach for to kill ideas is to kill the people that hold them. 99 times out of 100

This sounds like a conclusion reached through confirmation bias.

At least it didn't have to be from survivorship bias.

HEY!