Too many Americans do not appreciate the freedom and liberties we have in our unique nation, or how they originated and were handed to them by birthright. Billions of people around the world, by contrast, have never known constitutionally protected freedom and human rights.

Many are concerned about the declining level of public education and the lack of historical literacy. Whatever Anna Nicole, Paris Hilton, and Brittany do for their massive public attention, it is not terribly informative. America’s fascination with utter self-indulgence is frightening. At a time when forces internal and external to the U.S. are proceeding with plans for our nation's demise, spoiled female shallowness is where they focus. The decline of historical literacy in the U.S. has been alarmingly destructive.

Describing life under tyrannical rule to Americans is beyond the educational experience. We can learn a lot from people who have actually lived under tyranny and terror. A case in point is the Czech Republic, which has been blessed with at least two outstanding leaders. Now a democracy, residents of the former Czechoslovakia once lived behind the Iron Curtain and were completely subjugated by communist rule. Life was very difficult.

The first president of the nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union was Vaclav Havel. He is a writer and artisan, and heroic in his defiance of communist tyranny, and inspiring and literate in his criticisms of communism. Thousands had been killed by the Soviets for less impudence.

My admiration of Havel was affirmed when he wrote a highly critical analysis of the Western Peace Movement. Those who observe this Peace Movement have noticed that it is always critical of the West, especially the U.S. Little or no criticism was leveled against the Soviet Union or other dictatorships. Calls for disarmament were always one-sided and unilateral.

As someone who lived under the boot heels of the Soviets, Havel had noticed the same one-sided silence in the peace movement. He wrote:

How much trust or even admiration for the Western Peace Movement can we expect from a simple yet sensitive citizen of Eastern Europe when he has noticed that this movement has never, at any of its congresses or at any demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of participants, got around to protesting the fact that five years ago, one important European country attacked a small neutral neighbor and since that time has been conducting on its territory a war of extermination which has already claimed a million dead and three million refugees? Seriously, what are we to think of a peace movement, a European peace movement, which is virtually unaware of the only war being conducted today by a European state? As for the argument that the victims of aggression and their defenders enjoy the sympathies of Western establishments and so are not worthy of support from the left, such incredible ideological opportunism can provoke only one reaction -- utter disgust and a sense of limitless hopelessness.

The Western Peace Movement sold out the millions of people held captive, killed, and abused by the Soviets and never came to their defense. In addition, they were effectively calling for unilateral disarmament. It remains morally bankrupt, and Vaclav Havel has made that clear to the entire world.

Today's president of the Czech Republic is Vaclav Klaus, who comes from the same background. He truly understands from his personal experiences what it means to live a life of terror, killing, and deprivation under communist rule. He is also an economist, a devotee of free markets, and views himself as the "Milton Friedman" of the Czech Republic. He is very much from the school of thought that favors smaller, less intrusive, and less confiscatory governments. For people who have lived under tyranny, it is not surprising that they elect such people to keep tyranny from happening again.

President Klaus has been very vocal recently on the issues of global warming and environmentalism in general. His life experience has given abundant common sense and the ability to recognize tyranny no matters how it is labeled.

His observation that environmentalism has much in common with communism is crucial to understanding the environmental movement. It promotes bigger government, command and control government, confiscatory government, and more repressive government.

This is a significant and wise observation from a leader who has lived under tyranny. It also resonates with those Americans who have noticed the same command and control instincts of the environmental movement. Klaus observes, "As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now is ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."

Klaus quotes and agrees with Michael Crichton who says, "The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda". He points out that it requires courage to oppose "established truth".

This is why Klaus is so opposed to the supporters of the notion of manmade global warming, who deploy political correctness more than solid science. As reported in the June 13, 2007, issue of the Financial Times of London, Klaus states, "The issue of global warming is much more to do with social sciences than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of degree Celsius changes in average global temperature".

Klaus is a national leader whom we can all admire, respect, and above all heed.