RE: democracy vs republic theme.

Democracy is both a concept and a set of physical institutions designed for the purpose of governing.

As a concept, democracy represents freedom and equality among individuals, in direct opposition to the various forms of totalitarianism, of which Marxism has been the most effective and challenging to defeat. It is perfectly appropriate to frame political debate in terms of democracy vs totalitarianism (which is nearly synonymous with Marxism in terms of political viability.)

As a set of governing institutions, democracy is a one-man one-vote architecture, which is very different from the distributed power structure of the republic we have in USA.