I think that the fundamental problem of our new era is discovering how, in a world of mass communication, to get someone, or many ones, to shut the fuck up.
Back in the day, you could, in fact, fight ideas with bullets. In fact, this was very easy, because ideas would inevitably sprout in one area, then take a good decade or so to spread as people slowly walked from place to place and spread it. You could, conceivably, strangle an idea in its cradle with sheer manpower. But suddenly, once trains happened and people could discreetly be halfway across the country in a week, this became very hard, because someone could stir up trouble in one place, disappear, then suddenly pop up somewhere else to cause even more trouble. And then you have a movement, and that movement can move fast. As of the last decade, you don't even have to get out of your thinkin' chair. Post your hot opinion on Tumblr and half the world will see it in short order.
It was around this time that liberalism and the virtues of debate started to get popular, in part because anti-liberals suddenly found themselves unable to make the liberals shut the fuck up. The liberals, with dubious logic and usually citing no sources whatsoever, claimed that, to make someone shut the fuck up, you have to convince them that they're wrong. This, clearly, was a ruse, because people have been arguing about everything for the entire history of mankind, and that's basically never worked. But, with circular logic, they convinced everyone that they must have a point, because nobody can get them to shut the fuck up.
It took the last century for people to get that you can't beat an idea out of existence, and, look at the n00b playing prophet here, it will take this century for people to get that you can't argue it out of existence, either.
So, if you can't use brute force, and you can't debate about it, us folk of today are faced with a question:
How do you get someone to shut the fuck up?
