There are two arguments here.
The first is how does the US currently compare to how it used to be, and the second is how it compares to other regimes?
The second is perhaps easier to answer. And you don't have to look at Iran: try Burma, or Zimbabwe. Government control over what they approve and disapprove of is considerably greater in those countries than in the US. But the comparison works both ways. The current protests in Burma are because they can see how much comparitively better a society like the US is over their own. If the current Burmese government wants to quell such protests, as they have in the past, they would use far more force against citizens far more afraid of them than in the US. If, has been alleged, Bush et al want a state like that, there is obviously something holding them back from Just Doing It! :-O
The first one becomes a lesson history. Has the US ever been a place where capital punishment was an effective deterrent? I'd say yes, because capital punishment has been around a long long time. The society that founded the US would have believed in that deterrent effect.
Wade.
