THEY SAID IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN. NOT IN AMERICA. THEY WERE WRONG. When political parties view each other as evil, when compromise becomes impossible, the republic dies, and the Constitution dies with it. My father, my hero, was going to lead our nation with moral character and West Point inspired standards. When "inspired" became literal, and all opposition was destroyed, I had to chronicle what really happened or the world would never know the truth. My father's entire life in the United States Army was predicated on one man giving an order and everyone else following it. He wasn't a "threat to democracy"—he was an enigmatic fact. And he needed to be stopped.