Pause this journalism in a hurry and rewind to a quaint old view

You’ve heard the old saw. You know, the one that describes journalism as history in a hurry.

Sometimes I suspect we are in such a hurry that we forget to step back and observe from a perspective of history, asking how we got to where we are and what that tells us about where we are headed.

Take a couple of today’s top news stories.

“The government is working on a new loan program to help companies that issue credit cards, make student loans and finance car purchases, people familiar with the plan said Tuesday. …” The Associated Press reported early this morning. “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said he plans to use a ‘relatively modest share’ of the $700 billion financial bailout money to pay for the new program.”

Still another AP story laid out a multibillion-dollar plan for fiscal rescue, “The Federal Reserve said Tuesday it will buy up to $600 billion in mortgage-backed assets in another attempt to deal with the financial crisis. The Fed said it will purchase up to $100 billion in direct obligations from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the Federal Home Loan Banks. It also will purchase another $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities, pools of mortgages that are bundled together and sold to investors.”

That’s beginning to sound like business as usual these days.

Contrast this to what Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1791 in “Opinion against the Constitutionality of a National Bank.”

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people,’” Jefferson wrote. “To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.

“The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution.”

Not to Congress, not to the executive, not to the judiciary. Not to the Treasury. Not to the Federal Reserve.

How quaint to imagine that the federal government is not all things to all people. All powerful. All healing. All caring. That you have rights to do things, instead of having to ask permission first.