To answer MengLu and @lifebalance's questions in response to SColvin's answer (which I much prefer to the accepted answer for the control it provides), it seems as though you could just target a parent element of the lists when setting the display to none, adding a surrounding element if necessary. So if we suppose we're doing this for a table of contents, we can extend SColvin's answer:
HTML
<nav class="table-of-contents">
this is a normal line of text
* this is the first level of bullet points, made up of <space><space>*<space>
* this is more indented, composed of <space><space><space><space>*<space>
</nav>
CSS
.table-of-contents ul {
list-style-type: none;
}