Joseph Sabino Mistick: Free speech, voting and finding our way back

This year, by happenstance, Constitution Day and National Voter Registration Day were both celebrated this past Tuesday. Both days focus on the core principles that are essential to being an American.

Constitution Day marks the day in 1787 that the delegates from the various states signed the Constitution in Philadelphia. It honors those delegates and recognizes all American citizens — whether by birth or naturalization — for simply being American. And it celebrates our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

National Voter Registration Day is a nonpartisan civic holiday established to celebrate our democracy by registering new voters and urging citizens to participate in our elections. The League of Women Voters and nearly 2,000 other organizations are involved in a nationwide educational campaign that emphasizes the importance and integrity of our elections.

In some years past, both holidays have been front page news, especially when news editors were looking for good stories on otherwise slow news days. More recently, news of the two holidays gets lost amid the ongoing coverage of some of the very things that threaten our democracy.

The right to vote and the meaning of our various constitutional protections have come to mean broadly different things to opposite ends of the political spectrum.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation ever passed, targeted racial gerrymandering and Jim Crow laws — including poll taxes and fake literacy tests — that were used to deny the right to vote. The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted a key provision of the law and restored the ability of states to enact discriminatory election laws.

Remaining sections of the act are under constant assault, both in the courts and in Congress. Democrats have reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that would restore the VRA protections, but with Republican control of the Senate, House and the White House, it’s going nowhere.

And nothing shows the schism in America more than the divergent views of what the First Amendment means after the murder of conservative activist and free-speech advocate Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s supporters and friends, including President Trump, have vowed to punish and prosecute those who expressed contempt for Kirk after his death.

Others have pointed the finger at Trump for inciting violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and even at his campaign rallies, where he urged his supporters to assault protesters in the crowd and promised to pay their legal fees if they did.

It’s nothing new. In his 1992 book “Free Speech for Me — But Not For Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other,” Nat Hentoff wrote about “Americans’ unbounded hypocrisy concerning free speech.”

When Trump ordered the lowering of the American flag to half-staff in honor of his friend, others objected and some state officials refused. Our treatment of the American flag is still one of the greatest ways that Americans express the freedom of speech.

God knows there are plenty of reasons to fly the American flag at half-staff every day. Mass shootings at schools and concerts and churches. Never-ending wars. Assassinations and attempted assassinations. And the undeniable fact that our country is in a dark place and at risk.

Flying the flag at half-staff could be the daily reminder we need to finally fix these things and get back on track before it’s too late.