Well, Mr. Beck, I would never call a quote from George Washington ridiculous, but I will call the one on that t-shirt what it is -- a fake! Your new pal David Barton should be able to tell you all about that, since even he himself tells his followers not to use this quote. Of course, good old David didn't say anything when John Hagee used this same fake quote on your show a while back, although he was also one of your guests that day, and sitting only a few feet from Hagee. So, you might just want to go to your pal David's own website, where he has his list of "Unconfirmed Quotations" -- a list of quotes that he himself tells his website readers to "refrain from using ... until such time that an original primary source may be found." This George Washington quote is #2 on the list.

Here's that clip of John Hagee using this fake quote on your show, Mr. Beck:

Now, your pal David will probably say that when he put out his list of taboo quotes over a decade ago, it was merely because he had decided, being such a diligent scholar, to raise the academic standards of his work. But nobody actually buys that. Plain and simple, he got called out by some real historians on some of the bogus quotes that he had used in his 1988 book The Myth of Separation, largely because of Rush Limbaugh's repeated use of one of these bogus quotes. So, he put out his little list of quotes he wasn't going to use anymore, fine tuned many of the other lies from his 1988 book, and put out a new book, Original Intent, that didn't contain those particular quotes. (His new book still contained plenty of misquotes -- just not those particular ones.)

Of course, Mr. Beck, despite what he says on his website, you should know that your pal David doesn't really want his followers and minions to stop using the quotes on his list, as evidenced not only by his silence when John Hagee used one of these quotes on your show, but by the fact that six of these quotes were included in the National Council On Bible Curriculum in Public Schools curriculum, a curriculum whose advisory board includes ... uhm ... David Barton