style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">The annual Jefferson Lecture of the National Endowment for the Humanities may be the highest scholarly honour the US government bestows. On Monday, this year’s lecture was given by a bald and drawling 77-year-old Christian farmer from the Kentucky tobacco belt, a man who last August attacked “innovation” in the pages of the Louisville Courier Journal, who has been pilloried by feminists for having his wife type his articles and who concluded his speech: “I am nominating economy for an equal standing among the arts and humanities.” One might take him for the sort of yahoo whom the Tea Party would honour if it took over the federal government and then grew inattentive.