Patrick W. O’Neil

Opinion | Marco Rubio Is Failing Western Civ

Over and over again: America without Lincoln’s idea of America isn’t America. This was what the Civil War was about. @jamellebouie.net laying it down.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/o...

Opinion | We Shouldn’t Want to Eat Like Our Great-Great-Grandparents

Useful perspective from my old college classmate Gabe Rosenberg on ultraprocessed food. This former cancer patient remembers being told that certain surgeries “just looked wrong.” Which is to say, sure! But it’s nice to be alive enough to say it.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/o...

Teaching Honors is a hoot. From a comment I just wrote on a paper about the Iliad: “how does this illuminate all the entrail-spilling and torso-rolling that surrounds it?” American history has its share of entrail-spilling. But torso-rolling is part of Homer’s special sauce.

Opinion | The Trad Life Fantasy Was Never Real

Among other virtues, this punches a nice big hole in the idea that the lack of divorce in the past equaled stable home or family lives.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/o...

Leaving Phoenix after a massive soccer tournament, @kathleenduval.bsky.social ’s Native Nations reminds me that weirdness on this scale has all sorts of precedents—including travel teams in this very region!

Removing this photo inappropriately disparages this American.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/c...

Adjunct Instructor of History ...

Consider working as an adjunct for Methodist University's History department! Nice colleagues, interesting students. The catch: this job is in-person and MWF 9 - 9:50. Only candidates who can do that will be considered for this position.

www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.p...

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.

This is all sorts of problems, but just at the most micro level, where I still control at least some of the rules:

Students using AI: check your sources. A bad paper gets a bad grade; a paper with fake sources goes to the Honor Board. You want option A.

www.notus.org/health-scien...

Really enjoying condemnations of the new Pope for being “globalist.”

We began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics."

www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/spee...

Thinking about all the good we could accomplish if we could simply teach people to call them Michelobs Ultra

I’m enjoying how critics used to think that the problem with Shakespeare was that he didn’t clean history up to fit what obviously should have happened. “"History, grosly taken, was neither proper to instruct, nor apt to please.’" … Authors should therefore "’contrive something … more accurate.’"

The simultaneous attempts to use the Fourteenth Amendment to end birthright citizenship *and* enshrine fetal personhood are… really something.

Oh, it’s great! The best Star War in years—full of real people behaving believably and (after several episodes) an all-time performance by Fiona Shaw.

It’s at least my third viewing of Andor on account of how cool I am and how many friends I had in middle school. Anyway, it’s finally occurring to me that it’s a retelling of Casablanca, except (finally) from the perspective of Ugarte.

YouTube video by DAVID LYNCH THEATER David Lynch's Weather Report 12/16/22

A friend shared this, and it works better for Any Day than for That Day. Mean every word.

youtu.be/l21GFyOO8Ug

None reasons, I assume. None at all.

Hola! Hope you’re well. I’ve had a daily. phone reminder to write you a response to your previous year’s holiday card *for a year*. That reveals something about both the year and me, I’m afraid.

A good chunk of what anyone needs to know about me is that the appearance of this in my podcast feed elicited an extremely sincere and embarrassingly enthusiastic anticipatory “are you effing kidding me?” from my lips.

Why Is the Right Obsessed With Epic Poetry? From Elon Musk to Jordan Peterson, a certain strand of conservatism has recruited the poetry of Homer and Dante in their culture war.

Nothing surprising here, really: it’s all part of the same pathology. But my students and I read an old translation of the Aeneid this semester and *boy* was Aeneas annoying. The students were dying to spend time with Dido, who seemed recognizably human.

www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Happy American Bonfire Day!

The receipts are all there. Worth reading them year by year.

Opinion | Enough With the Land Acknowledgments Instead of proclaiming performative acknowledgments of Native peoples, institutions should establish strong relationships with Native nations.

A well-supported take on Land Acknowledgements by @kathleenduval.bsky.social. Good intentions that “tend to reinforce the myth of Native disappearance and irrelevance,” or curdle into “ ‘moral exhibitionism.’” Opens up the question of What Words Can Accomplish.

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/o...

Jimmy Carter Did Away With This Extravagant Presidential Tradition Wait, there was a presidential yacht?

A Presidential Yacht isn’t actually weirder than, say, Camp David, but it *is* funnier.

Speaking of Camp David, Nixon apparently paved over its nature trails. Which is also funny.

slate.com/news-and-pol...

I taught my son’s 8th grade class about slaveholder marriages; afterward, the teacher had the students write me thank-you notes. Here’s what one said:

Dear Dr. O’Neil
Thank you for teaching me about the history on time travel and some other thing you taught us about

Pleasure’s all mine, my friend.

Maybe it’s a thing!