Hillary Clinton used to talk ad nauseam about how “it takes a village to raise a child.” Her good friend Terry McAuliffe will tell you that parents have no business in that village when it comes to the education of their children.

The former Democratic governor of Virginia, who would very much like to be governor again, admitted this week that the government, not parents, should be in charge of educating kids.

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe said in response to Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, who says parents should be more involved in the decisions of local school districts. “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out, and make their own decision.”

How dare those parents, who are paying the taxes to operate their schools, have any say in how their children are taught.

If that idea sounds insane, it’s because it is. But McAuliffe is simply echoing a foundational principle of today’s American left. The “village” is the government, and the village “experts” are not to be questioned or tested.

Wisconsinites heard the same sentiments last week from the state’s top educrat, superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction Jill Underly. The tool of the teachers unions preaches blind allegiance to the education establishment, particularly during the pandemic.

“We should be supporting each other instead of tearing down those who dare to provide leadership in a time of crisis,” she said. These same leaders have presided over shockingly low student performance in Wisconsin’s public schools in large part because they have prioritized radical indoctrination over truly critical-thinking education.

Kaylee McGhee White, writing in The Washington Examiner, notes that none of this should come as a surprise to parents familiar with the public school system and the educrats who control it.

“These people want to use education as a means to turn impressionable young children into the next generation of leftist activists, and they have become increasingly hostile to any parental attempts to stop it. Parents who protest the teaching of critical race theory in schools have been smeared as ‘racists.’ And parents who oppose the transgender ideology and the way in which it has been implemented into public schools are intentionally kept in the dark by educators and even risk losing custody of their children if they try to push back.”

But parents are fighting back. They are standing up against leftist educators and administrators, and weak school board members who go along to get along. They are pushing back against Terry McAuliffe and the government “village” crowd.

It has and will continue to be a bruising battle. Nothing less than the future of America is at stake.