Which means, the terroists don’t get their funds from taxes. So mobilizing ours and decreasing our economy isn’t going to counter theirs.

Historically, taxes have destroyed and broken the economies of the state in question. The logistics of military operations puts a huge strain on civilians. Anyone who studied history accurately would know that.

The lower the taxes, and the better the economy, the longer a war may be waged in economic and logistical terms.

Britain almost went bankrupt fighting a war with France, and one of the reasons why they were taxing the hell out of the American Colonies. I presume that a Revolutionary War is your idea of Britain’s higher taxes giving them victory, eh?

I’m certainly glad some people are not running the government these days.

That would be a first.

It may be that “The historical context is not useful.” Conservatives, neo- and otherwise, are in my experience generally skeptical of such claims, though.

The notion that raising taxes in wartime “actually hinders and subtracts people’s chances of victory” is contradicted by hundreds of years of historical experience. War-winning societies tend overwhelmingly to be those that mobilize more of their societal resources.

People seem to think higher taxes means people will be more ready to sacrifice, and hence our will to fight will increase.

That is pretty totally false.

Either the will to fight is there, or it isn’t, increasing taxes does zero to help. It actually hinders and subtracts people’s chances of victory.

What “scale” is that?
Usually, a scale has a context.
Proportion of GDP?
The historical context is not useful due to the immense change in the size of the economy and the immense increase in government revenues.
I am aware that certain people, no names here, pretend that lower tax RATES, which is what we have, are always and inevitably associated with lower revenues. This is not necessarily true, nor is it true now.
So if the revenues are increasing and the Dow is ‘way up, and unemployment is down, and the DoD budget is a decreasing proportion of the federal budget and the GDP, what other scale did you have in mind?

Considering that there are about 150,000 men in Iraq, some tens of thousands in Afghanistan, as opposed to 500,000 in Viet Nam during the height of US involvement, not to mention about the same in various European countries, during the same period, and an active duty military considerably more populous than today’s, what “scale” are you talking about?

The article’s historical examples are interesting. I wonder if there is an example of a successful war on a scale even approximating the current War on Terror which has been fought while cutting taxes.

It has a read definition, it’s just one of those fuzzy ones… like “Science Fiction”, which is waggishly defined as “What science fiction editors buy”

I know what it is (memes OR SF), it’s just not easy to define in concrete terms.

Some gestalts (Now THERE’s a word!) just are not easy to put in a small number of words.

`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.’

“Meme” is woefully underpaid.
:^D

Why limit yourself?

As DP once said, “You can lead a whore to culture but you cannot make her think…” — give them all a chance, it’s up to them to sup.