Cool the rhetoric, regardless of who’s in office

The election is over, and the president has been chosen. It really doesn’t matter which man won to me; I would still respect the fact that the majority of people had picked him to lead us. I did so when Bush was elected, when Clinton was elected, and I would have done so if Romney had been elected.

However, not everyone sees it as finished. Over the past week since the election, things have taken a strange turn that I have never seen. Business owners started firing or laying off people because they claim they weren’t going to be able to afford the Affordable Health Care Act when it fully implements in 2014.

So companies such as Olive Garden, Burger King, Murray Energy and a host of anonymous businesses said they let people go or reduced hours to get employees under the 35-hour minimum requirement for employer health insurance. Some of the business owners went so far as to tell a conservative talk show host that they singled out the ones they suspected as having voted for Obama to go first.

Really? Is this what our country has come too? Not trying to make our lives better but by taking a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution and protected under free speech and using it against us?  I find it deplorable that a business would stoop so low.

And that’s not all. There are also a number of people out in the interwebs and social media wishing for the president’s assassination. I mean, come on. This is getting way out of hand. What happened to the Christian belief of “Thou shall not kill”? Doesn’t that idea also cover not wishing for someone to kill another?

Remember what this type of rhetoric was blamed for before? It was the death of nine people and injury of 20 more when Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head. A nine-year-old girl who was learning about government was one of the victims. These hate campaigns took the blame for that shooting, but how many more incidents can be blamed on hate?

It is time for the country to come together and get things done, not sit back and continue the negative attacks of the past year and a half. President Obama is back in the White House for four more years—let’s hold him accountable, as well as the Congress that was so hell bent on getting him out, and get some real progress made. No more effigies calling for his assassination. No more laying off innocent bystanders because of your preconceived notion of costs a full year before they are known.

This is our country. We should demand that a certain level of decorum and action be in place on all sides, including on the public. If you are one of the people calling for the death of a man, I hope you think about that and check your morals. If you are a company that refuses to let anyone who voted a certain way give your their business, I think your bottom line will see the effects of that decision you made, not that was made for you. And if you are a company that fires based upon how a person voted, I hope you are boycotted by members of both parties because that is no way to move things forward.

And if you are out there tweeting these ridiculous things, there are reasons to keep these things to yourself. Take it from Denise Helms, who is not only under investigation but also lost her job after posting some pretty unacceptable things about Obama.

It’s nearly 2013. Let’s act like it.