The analogy about the military seems odd, since most of the Republican elite is accused of being chickenhawks. Does that mean they are ignorant about how the military works? It certainly seems like it.

An argument with two opposing sides should be solvable by one side proving the point. When one side believes they have proved something and the other still doesn't accept it then one wonders how to describe them. For example stupid, crazy, willfully ignorant, etc.

The other possibility though is that the one who thinks he has proved something is simply in error, and either can't or won't see their mistake. Such a person is usually called a crank.

On the subject of tax cuts the situation is the Republicans think the Democrats are stupid/crazy/in denial and the Democrats think much the same of the Republicans. So the issue must come down to facts and knowledge and who has the burden of proof.

The tax cut argument is a red herring, the real question is when anything in the economy becomes cheaper people have more money in their pockets and can potentially make profits from that money. Sometimes they make more money out of that saving than the saving represents. In that case making those savings for the citizen can make a net positive for the economy.

This is nothing new though and predates the tax cut argument, it is called the multiplier effect. When for example the oil prices go down the saavings people make are translated into more profits for everyone. Any commodity price that comes mainly from outside a country gives a gain for people if the prices go down.

If though the prices go down on a material that is mined in the US as well as overseas the picture is more complicated. So lower oil prices make for savings for some people and for those in Texas for example they might hurt the economy.

Taxes are just another kind of expense, and so lowering taxes has the same kind of effect. This is also nothing new, supply siders didn't invent this either, Keynes did. In a recession reducing taxes or increasing government spending has this multiplier effect which creates some economic prosperity and once the economy recovers these taxes and spending are put back otherwise the government runs a deficit. The idea is probably that economies suffer damage from a bubble or changing economic fortunes and this short term stimulus gives them time to heal from it.

So the real issue of taxes and government spending is the multiplier effect. Supply siders believe that certain taxes can be cut and this Keynesian stimulus will multiply through the economy and the government gets more taxes back so everyone wins. Demand siders believe that additional spending in some cases will do the same thing, pay for itself through more taxes.

Obviously supply side stimulation work sometimes. For example if there is an earthquake or tornado the federal government gives relief and this gets that community back on their feet and paying taxes faster. If they didn't help the area would remain depressed for a long time and pay few taxes.

In the same way supply side also works sometimes. Sometaxes can choke off certain economic activities, for example if you taxed first home buyers too much then that would keep them from buying houses and the whole housing industry would eventually suffer.

So the question of the wilful ignorance comes down to facts in economic science, which is whether certain tax cuts will stimulate economic activity enough to pay for themselves. The argument that it's their money is a pointless one unless you are going to end all taxes on everyone. The flat tax argument is also a pointless one, either the government believes the taxing everyone equally or it doesn't. If it doesn't then it has a right to tax some people more for the benefit of the community.

So the specific argument of tax cuts is whether a specific tax cut will bring in more tax revenue by this stimulus or not. Now the record on this is quite clear because of course governments keep records on this. The overwhelming consensus in scientific mainstream economic theory is that the supply side tax cuts so far have always failed to bring in more revenue than they lost, and so they created more debt. Stockman's book "The Triumph of Politics" is a good illustration of this.

Also the tax cuts Bush made have also failed to bring in more revenue than they have lost, but this must be broken into two parts, one part is stimulating the economy for a recession and the other part is supply side general tinkering.

In most cases it can be foretold whether tax cuts will work like this or not because in the science of economics the multiplier effect is well documented and modelled. So economists generally speaking knew beforehand how well Bush's tax cuts would work from previous experience and their models fairly accurately predicted the result.

The result of course is they didn't work. They work targeted at reducing taxes in ways that were already known to have very low multiplier effects, and so they created a larger deficit. You can call the mainstream economic science willful ignorance but that's the overwhelming opinion there.

That doesn't mean that theoretically supply side tax reductions won't work, but that they need to be targetted in ways that have a high enough multiplier. The real problem is if no one really believes it was going to work and it was all just an excuse to give a tax break to wealthier supporters that will have to be repayed by others later on the national debt.

So Democrats basically believe supply side is a pack of lies to get a tax break, or they believe they are a bunch of cranks pushing a discredited economic theory. The only way they will change their mind is with hard economic science and the supply siders don't have it.