Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Aaron Miller, executive director of the Foundation for Liberty and Freedom, to discuss advancements in the Duck River bill and mobilizing conservatives.
Leahy: We are delighted right now to welcome to our microphones, Mr. Aaron Miller. Aaron is a Maury County Commissioner, and he is also the executive director of the Foundation for Liberty and Freedom. And we’re just making a few adjustments here to get him on, and he’s ready. Good morning, Aaron. How are you today?
Miller: Good morning, sir. Doing well. How are you?
Leahy: Tell us a little bit about what is going on with the Maury County Commission and the Foundation for Liberty and Freedom.
Miller: So I’ll give you a quick update. On the commission side, we’re busy, of course, in Nashville for this selection up in the legislature. We got our Duck River protection bill passed. We’re very happy about that. We had a lot of commissioners working very hard on that.
Leahy: Can we just stop for a moment? Describe this somewhat contentious bill.
Miller: It was.
Leahy: Describe the bill and what it was passed. And has it been signed into law as well?
Miller: Yes, sir. So the bill was to designate a portion of the Duck River in Maury County as a class two scenic waterway. And so what that means is there are additional protections on what kind of facilities can be built along that section of the river, what it can be used for, and this sort of thing.
And it’s the heaviest protection that we can place on it from the state level. There was one particular outside corporation from outside of the state that was trying to build a landfill nearby. So that was definitely a concern. But that happened to coincide with us trying to get this bill passed. It was not a direct correlation with them trying to build that.
Leahy: Got it. That landfill is not going to happen as a result of this bill. Is that correct?
Miller: As of right now. They implied that they would seek legal recourse. So I’m sure that’ll be coming down the pike, but as of right now, our waterway looks safe.
Leahy: And did the governor sign that bill yet?
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: Okay, good. Good news on that. Tell us a little bit about your work as the executive director of the Foundation for Liberty and Freedom.
Miller: Yes, sir. My role is the director. We’ve got a small team. And our mission is to educate. So there is a three-step process that I see to make a change in our community. It’s activation, mobilization, and engagement. So I like to say that activation begins with education. We do lectures, we do workshops, we donate books, and it’s to get folks in the community educated on what’s going on in the world politically with economics, with philosophy, and with all these different things.
And I found that there’s a huge amount of hunger for it, especially for folks that are in the workforce. They’re busy, they’re raising families, and they can’t necessarily pay attention to the world of politics and all of the nuances, but they want to know, why are all these changes occurring.
Why are these things happening? I don’t understand. And so we seek to provide them with that information. And then if they go, oh, wow, now I want to get involved, they start talking to one another. That’s mobilization. And then, finally, they can engage with those issues in their communities, having been armed with that information and having mobilized together with one another.
Leahy: I know that you have been doing Marxism mapping lectures statewide. You started that at the beginning of this year. How is that going?
Miller: It’s fantastic. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from it, a lot of great reviews, and I’m always refining the lecture as well, adding more information. People are asking about what’s ESG. How does this fold into things into this overall arc? So yes, constantly defining the model. I’m working on a new lecture right now.
The title is still to come, but basically, the idea is breaking down what the left’s worldview is outside of Marxism and how they engage with conservatives. For example conservatives, we value consistency. We value a moral worldview. We value law and order. The left doesn’t. The goal of this new lecture is to get people to understand that.
The left doesn’t see things the way we do. They see our values as weaknesses to be exploited. And so how can we work around that and what things do we need to change about our worldview and how we operate in order to meet that threat?
Leahy: I refer to some of the far-left legislators out there who are activists as part of the American Bolsheviks. That is, they’re trying to destroy our system by, in essence, confronting the system in, in violent ways. We see state legislatures all around the country in what looks to me to be organized, and all these groups are well-funded. And do you see this as a nationally organized and coordinated effort by the left?
Miller: Absolutely, without a doubt. Especially during the Summer of Love with the George Floyd riots. We know for a fact that there were activists that would fly into major cities where these events were occurring and where these riots were occurring. They would fly in and set up, and they would organize, and they would rent out Airbnbs.
They were extremely well coordinated and extremely well funded. This is something that the conservatives, the right, need to catch up on. Our worldview is very individualistic, foundationally, the rugged individual, this sort of thing. This current battle is actually a handicap for us.
So that’s something that we need to overcome. Whereas the left, their worldview is very collectivist, foundationally. So it’s easy for them to form together and to organize and to do these things. So that’s one of those things that we use. Conservatives need to figure out how to overcome that handicap so that we can meet them on this battlefield, if you will, on equal terms.
Leahy: I got a bit of a fastball coming right down the plate. Are you ready?
Miller: Shoot.
Leahy: What is the probability that in this coming special session on “gun reform” of the Tennessee General Assembly that Governor Bill Lee has asked for coming up this month that the leftist activists around the country are going to swarm around the capitol of Tennessee and try to intimidate our state legislators into some kind of reduction of the Second Amendment.
Miller: Sure. My opinion is that there’s a very high chance of that happening. A lot of eyes are on Tennesse, especially after the expulsion of the two legislators. We missed that third one by one vote. Everyone is watching us. There is a lot of pressure on legislators and, of course, Governor Lee. I think there is a very high chance that they will maximize that pressure in any way they can.
Visit Foundlf.org for more information on how you can get involved.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Aaron Miller” by Tennessee Stands. Background Photo “Maury County Courthouse” by Chris Light. CC BY-SA 4.0.
