Really. That's a good one. Apparently you haven't met any.
I grew up under Communism. If you think 'civilized' ways can in any way 'put down' hard-core ideological belivers (communist or islamist, they are the *same*), you may want to re-think your world outlook. Yes, what you find there is the reality of the world we live in. The sooner one realizes that fact, and applies Machiavellian thought process to it, the better one fares in the reality.
I'm sorry, but how is mass imprisonment and using Machiavellian machinations of getting the population to agree with you in order to turn public opinion against the Communists not a more humane, and rather more elegant, way of putting them down instead of executing them all without a second thought?