Live from Music Row, Wednesday 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 newly elected Maury County Commissioner Aaron Miller in studio to discuss why he decided to run for county commission and his battle against grooming with the Maury County Library.
Leahy: In studio, Maury County Commissioner Aaron Miller. Aaron, so tell us a little bit about your decision to run for county commission after having lived in Maury County for two years.
Miller: I knew that was something that I wanted to do coming out of the military. As I said before, in the military, because of the Hatch Act and several other things, you’re not allowed to be political in a lot of ways, and you’re especially not allowed to run for office.
I knew that’s something that I wanted to do upfront. And then moving to Maury County, moving to Columbia, seeing the community, and all of the values that we hold down there, I knew that I wanted to be a part of that, and I wanted to be a part of preserving it.
And so when the opportunity to run for county commission came up, I said, okay, well, God, lead the way. And if this is where I’m supposed to be…
Leahy: There are 22 members of the county commission.
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: Are there 22 districts?
Miller: There are 11 districts and two per district?
Leahy: There are 11 districts and two per district. How did you do? Did you have competition?
Miller: I did.
Leahy: What was the final vote tally?
Miller: In my race there were six total.
Leahy: That’s a lot.
Miller: That was the most in in the county. I came in second place, but of course, because there is there are two open positions. Second place is a win.
Leahy: There you go. I note here from your bio at the Foundation for Liberty and Freedom, a nonprofit, foundlf.org, that while you were in the Air Force for 12 years, you earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of South Carolina and a Master’s in international affairs from Middle Tennessee State. You’re currently pursuing a Master’s in management from MTSU.
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: Now how were you able to do that while serving in the military full-time?
Miller: I’m a glutton for punishment, certainly. For my undergrad, you have tuition assistance. So one of the federal benefits of being on active duty is that you have that TA to spend.
From there, it’s up to the student. So I worked shift work while I was on active duty. It was rough. I could work all night and then have to go to class in the morning. But if you want it bad enough…
Leahy: Would you go physically to class or online?
Miller: A little bit of both.
Leahy: How long did it take you to get a bachelor’s degree while working and doing it part-time?
Miller: I think total it was six or eight years.
Leahy: A motivated guy.
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: So you win. And when we were sworn in? September 1st?
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: What’s it like being on the Maury County Commission with the new mayor and our good friend Sheila Butt?
Miller: Yes, sir. It’s a lot of fun, frankly. We get to work with folks who for the most part, we’re on the same page. We agree on most things, but, of course, having different backgrounds and experiences, we bring a lot of different things to the table. But I really enjoy it.
We get to have some somewhat heated discussions. But just to have the awesome, and I use that word in the traditional sense. The awesome power and authority to help guide the county. I think that’s important for all of us to keep in mind that we do have that power, and we need to use it responsibly.
Leahy: Last year, you started a nonprofit called the Foundation for Liberty and Freedom.
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: And you set it up to counter the hold the political left has in the United States. You’re opposing critical theory, socialist policy, and child exploitation. This came about, I believe, because of an incident down in Maury County. Tell us about that. With the drag queen library guy.
Miller: Yes, sir. The two actually happened to occur at the same time but were unrelated to one another at the time. But we’ve since sort of moved our mission towards that because that’s where the culture war is now.
Leahy: P.S. The left hates your guts.
Miller: Yes, they do. Yes, they do.
Leahy: And every possible bad word you could describe somebody, they use that to describe your efforts. But what is the terrible thing that you decided that you wanted to do?
Miller: The terrible thing I decided to do is to take a stand against all of these infringements on our traditional values in Maury County.
Leahy: In particular, the Maury County Library.
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: The librarian wanted to do a drag queen hour or something like that. And by the way, in case you haven’t noticed, the Association of Librarians, they’re all a bunch of left-wing nut cases, in my view. And so you’ve got a left-wing nutcase down in Maury County who says, let’s have a drag queen hour. Who can imagine that? But go ahead.
Miller: The issue that we found was that there was a display of books for Pride Month, ostensibly at least, but we noticed that every single one of them was written specifically for children.
Now, if you have a Pride display, you’re celebrating the LGBT community; you might assume that they would have a biography of Freddie Mercury or something like that or materials that are also targeting adults.
This was not the case. Every single one of them was for children. And bright colors and cartoon characters, much like you see marketing with cereal boxes.
Leahy: In essence, let’s be honest about what they’re doing. They’re grooming young children to be sexually active and supporting gay stuff and all that.
Miller: And the library director at the time, of course, he has since resigned, at his private business, also held a drag queen brunch. And that was last year.
Leahy: Didn’t he have like a brewery brew pub or something?
Miller: Yes, sir. He owns Bad Idea Brewing, which is ironically named, of course.
Leahy: Bad Idea Brewing.
Miller: You can’t make this up.
Leahy: And he still owns Bad Idea? He’s full of bad ideas.
Miller: Apparently so. But at least he’s not in our library anymore.
Leahy: How is it that there was this conflict and what was a criticism of him, and why did he end up resigning?
Miller: The issue that we had with this was this is obvious targeting. It is obvious grooming of children. I have a friend of mine, he said his five-year-old granddaughter walked in there and ran over and picked up one of these books and opens it up to a page that had extremely explicit diagrams and pictures and instructions on certain activities.
Leahy: This is, of course, what you want every five-year-old to know.
Miller: Of course. People have unironically called it inclusive sex education.
Leahy: Otherwise known as grooming.
Miller: Grooming, indeed. We obviously took issue with that, and we said, we want this director to resign, and we want answers from the library board as to how this occurred. We still haven’t gotten those answers, by the way.
Leahy: From the library board?
Miller: Yes, sir.
Leahy: But the director did resign.
Miller: He did resign.
Leahy: And he did it calling you all sorts of bad names.
Miller: So not him, but plenty of his supporters. I was doxed online. I got close to 200 phone calls from people across the country calling me every name.
Leahy: Hold up. People across the country?
Miller: Across the country.
Leahy: How many from Maury County?
Miller: Hard to say, but there were subsequent events, meetings, and such, where there were probably close to 30 to 40, maybe 50 people from the local area that were in support of the library director.
Leahy: They support grooming, basically.
Miller: They support grooming.
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.
