There she goes, being all empirical and stuff

Obviously, war and government power go together. But, at least looking at the spending data, it doesn't look war spending implies increased spending ad infinitum. Obviously, I'm talking about physical wars where our troops fight some other troops, not something like the cold war or The War on Terror, which are amorphous and lead to civil rights issues. There's no (in my opinion) denying that.

But, if your a fiscal conservative, war is not a big (and permanent) deal as Social Security, Medicare or other forms of middle class welfare. For fiscal reasons those are more important things to fight.