Thank God somebody was willing to ask.

“Ask what?” you might be wondering. I’m getting to the question of what it is, exactly, that Al Gore did to enhance “peace” such that he has now won a Nobel Peace Prize.

While the White House officially expressed “happiness” last week over Gore’s award, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi used the occasion to reassure us that Mr. Gore has sounded a “clarion call” that has “awakened the world” to the “very real threat” of global warming, the question of what has Gore done for “peace” remains.

Of course, we should acknowledge that Gore served the United States as its Vice President during “peace-time.” So did Dan Quayle, and George H. W. Bush, and Walter Mondale, and the service of each of these former V.P.’s no doubt contributed to the overall objective of “peace” throughout the world.

But Quayle, Bush and Mondale never got a Nobel Peace Prize. And Gore’s prize has now been bestowed six years after leaving his position as Vice President. So what exactly has Gore done to warrant this otherwise high honor?

There doesn’t seem to be any easy, substantive answer to this question. And while many of us in the media have been overindulging in speculation for the past few days about “the prize” being enough to instigate that long-awaited Gore For President 2008 campaign, there is at least one politician who has dared to question Gore’s selection for the Nobel Peace Prize in the first place.

He is a “President” himself, the President of a new and growing democracy in Eastern Europe - - but you’ve probably never heard of him.

Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, dared to release a statement last week claiming that he was "somewhat surprised" that former US vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize. In this written statement he claimed that "the relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," and that "it rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace."

Thank you, Mr. President!

While U.S. Mayors, Governors, Congressional members and foreign heads of state continue fawning over Gore as he narrates a motion picture, produces rock concerts, preaches his eco-centric gospel of green, and insists that “the scientific community” agrees with everything he says, there is at least one head of state who has the audacity to suggest that Gore might be misunderstanding some things.

And what might be the misunderstandings? What are those “basic cornerstones of the current civilization” that Gore seems to be doubting?

President Klaus made this very clear earlier this Summer, while writing in the Financial Times Journal. In his June essay, Mr. Klaus called into question the hysteria that is the “global warming movement,“ by making the outrageous observation that weather patterns change over time. He also mentioned that during the past century the average global temperature increased only .6 percent. In an additional shocking claim, Klaus stated that, among adults living on planet earth today, “all of us have noticed that even during our life times temperature changes occur (in both directions).”

So German Chancellor Angela Merkel and (former) British Prime Minister Tony Blair and “authorities” at the United Nations and other big and important people around the world obsess about so-called “global warming” and seek to, quite literally, “change the weather.“ All the while, President Klaus has repeatedly been so bold and brash as to remind us that “change” is a natural facet of the weather, and that the global temperature hasn’t increased very much in the past one hundred years.

Most important about President Klaus‘ comments is the fact that he identifies the global warming hysteria for what it truly is: yet another attempt to control human behavior and constrain human liberty. These are threats to civilization with which Mr. Klaus is well acquainted, given that he has lived most of his life under communist dictatorships.

In his Financial Times Journal editorial, President Klaus concluded by saying “I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in 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.”

By every indication it would seem that Al Gore, officials at the United Nations, and the decision markers with the Nobel Prize believe that a “central, global” economic planning is the very force that can lead humankind closer to prosperity, and peace.

Unfortunately, none of these people would seem to have learned the lessons of history, as President Klaus apparently has.