President Joe Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, after delivering remarks on the CDC’s updated guidance on mask wearing for vaccinated individuals Thursday, May 13, 2021, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House photo by Adam Schultz)

A former state attorney general is warning Americans of an “elitism” that is infecting the country – the attitude among “government officials” that they are “beyond criticism.”

This has become evident during the nation’s fight against COVID-19, as various government officials at times have simply stated their opinion and declared it to be truth that all must follow – regarding mask mandates, vaccinations and more.

Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s medical adviser, at one point went on camera to state that people who were arguing with him were arguing with the “truth,” even though on issues such as masking, studies are in disagreement on the “truth.”

But it’s not just on medical issues that the “truth” is being contested. Now, in a column at Real Clear Politics, former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline explained the problem.

He said the problem also appeared in the discussion over Joe Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, to leave the nation run by the terrorists in the Taliban.

“Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was jailed – in solitary confinement, no less – for publicly criticizing the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Kline wrote. “Meanwhile, Gen. Mark Milley is not being held accountable for either his role in the Afghanistan debacle – even after an errant drone strike killed seven innocent children – or his communications with China without the president’s knowledge, nor his repeated communication with various authors and journalists.”

Such situations are “not the way it’s supposed to work in a democracy,” Kline explained. “Too many government officials today think they’re above reproach and beyond rebuke, and believe that our rights emanate from government and, therefore, can be removed as desired by those in authority.”

He continued, “The American people cannot tolerate such elitism from public officials if we desire to maintain our freedoms. Any people claiming to be free must have the courage to stand for the freedoms of those with whom one disagrees. If we do not do so, we will not long remain free.

“When our elected officials refuse to be open and transparent with us, we should assume it’s because they’re not doing their jobs properly, and we should use the power of our votes to replace them with someone who respects our rights as citizens. Otherwise, we might find one day that we no longer have the option of replacing corrupt or incompetent officials,” he said.

For examples of problems with “elitism” on the issue of election integrity, he cited the decision by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Arizona to “aggressively refuse to cooperate in good faith with the recently concluded state Senate audit of the 2020 election, even after the courts ordered them to comply with subpoenas demanding that they turn over election materials and information.”

Then, too, he wrote, “In Wisconsin, Democrat Gov. Tony Evers recently encouraged municipal clerks to get ‘lawyered up’ before speaking with the Office of Special Counsel that the State Assembly created to investigate the 2020 elections. The special counsel, retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, has been very clear that the purpose of the investigation is not to overturn the election, but rather to restore public confidence in the electoral process by determining what went right as well as what may have gone wrong in the administration of the election.

“The only reason clerks would need to be ‘lawyered up’ is if they had something to hide, such as intentional violations of state election law for partisan purposes,” Kline said.

And in Pennsylvania, he noted, Attorney General Josh Shapiro and “every Democrat in the state Senate have filed lawsuits to block subpoenas seeking information about voters as part of a comprehensive investigation into the 2020 election.”

He pointed out the allegations are that the lawsuits are intended to protect voter privacy, but said “the alleged threat is purely hypothetical and protecting voter privacy is not their concern, as the Democrat-operated Department of State shares the same information sought with outside vendors and private partisan organizations.”