Republicans are inconstant in their defense of individual liberties.

You've made this too easy. Where to I start? I'm going to run this topic again to debate a republican on this, but I do like your creativity. "The question now is whether or not the Republican philosophy towards economics actually a step forward towards individual liberty." I think you have individual liberty confused with a guaranty of prosperity or favorable outcome. I'll get further into that later. "Republican philosophy, in regards to economics, does not promote individual liberty." This is simply a false statement, bordering on an oxymoron. You falsely claim that promoting individual freedom with regard to one's earnings (i.e. his time and therefore his life) does not promote individual freedom. Quite literally, it does just that. What you are unhappy about are the unfounded consequences you claim would RESULT from such individual freedom. "take the Republican economic agenda and imagine it fulfilled. All social services would be privatized of course. Education would be privatized so only the children of wealthy are privy to quality education, giving them the opportunity to become wealthy. Police would be privatized so only the wealthy would live in communities that are safe." Unfortunately, the remainder of your argument is based on the false premise that Republicans want to privatize all social services including the police. Not even libertarians want to privatize the police. Also, republicans are not universally in favor of privatizing the public school system. You must have read my diary on that one. Republicans are in favor of school choice vouchers, which do not call for the privatization of public schools. Even if you had been correct about Republicans wanting rampant privatization of everything, you still provided no evidence that privatized services would be less available or less effective than those currently provided by the government. I personally would argue that private charities would provide BETTER services, and to those who REALLY need the help. But that's another debate. "It promotes a rigid class system which actually significantly restricts the liberty of individuals. ...without social mobility, there is no freedom for people to do what they aspire to do." Unfortunately you gave no evidence that libertarian policies, much less Republican policies, would create a rigid class system. Had you been able to, you would have still needed to prove that people would be "locked in" to those classes. "...the economically impoverished would be trapped by their economic circumstance. A child of factory workers would be effectively condemned to factory work." This remark redundant to the previous, but it is valuable in that it demonstrates how outcome-inspired and emotion-driven you are in your thinking. You come to your conclusions with no regard for right or wrong, truth or principle, or sound reasoning. You are guided only by your own hysteria and unfounded fears. In closing, your argument is weak at every level. Your are wrong about republicans being in favor of unbridled privatization. Your claim that privatization would reduce the adequacy of social services is unfounded. And you are wrong to imply that any such reduction would be tantamount to a loss of individual liberty.