Of course there's degrees of endorsement, there always is. I'm just responding to the notion of yours that "in a republic, the state is the citizenry." Well, no, it's not, and it doesn't need to be - and indeed, there's no real way for it, in fact, to be so. Certainly, it can represent certain preferences of the citizenry, through various mechanisms and political tools, but the state isn't the citizenry, it's an institution with particular powers and structures. That's not objecting to the concept of endorsement, it's just pointing out the distinction.