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Want proof that the nanny state creates incapable humans? Look no further.

In Oregon and New Jersey, getting gas hasn’t simply been a matter of pulling up to a station, sliding your debit card, and scrolling through the newsfeeds on your phone while the gas pumps.  Instead, these two states banned self-service gas stations.  I’ve always found it bizarre and insulting that I’m prohibited from pumping my own gas while traveling in these states.

On January 1st, however, Oregon counties with 40,000 residents or fewer are now allowed to pump their own gas, even though — according to The Daily Caller — “full-service gas stations have been the norm since 1951.”

God bless Oregon for its expansion of freedom!  (Now, only New Jersey keeps us from exercising this basic human task.) Though I’m all in favor of full service stations — if the marketplace supports it — it’s incomprehensible and unAmerican for a state to regulate its citizens in this way.

However, many Oregonians aren’t happy. A CBS affiliate in Medford, Oregon asked its Facebook fans what they thought about the change… and here are just a couple of the responses:

“I don’t even know HOW to pump gas and I am 62, native Oregonian…..I say NO THANKS! I don’t want to smell like gasoline!”

and

“It is safer for people, if a station attendant does the service. The only advantage of pumping the gas yourself, would be paying a few cents less a gallon. Getting older, and being disabled, I’d rather have the help!”

You got that?

While young adults through seniors have been pumping their own gas in forty-eight states for decades, many Oregonians believe they’re incapable of this mundane task.  One Facebook commenter put it best: “Oregon is full of mentally defective, full grown children.”

Exactly.  America is supposed to be a nation of self-governing citizens, not people who hyperventilate over the sight of a gas station.

When government erodes freedom, it also infantilizes its citizens.

Glad to see one state fighting back!

Hat Tip: The Daily Caller

Image Credit: Pixabay

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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