iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I’ve always liked that democracy allows for bias in favor of democracy. It seemed like a nice exception to the general principle of trying to remove bias. Anyway, it was always fun haranguing students to vote in a scrupulously non-partisan way. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | What Does the Trump Administration Have Against the 26th Amendment?

American democracy and American higher education are inextricable.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Four of nine Supreme Court justices deemed the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship protections unconstitutional. The person who best helped me recapture some civic-minded hope has been dead for 131 years. www.fayobserver.com/story/opinio...

fayobserver.com

If Frederick Douglass could handle birthright citizenship, so can you | Opinion

A Supreme Court ruling preserved birthright citizenship, but Frederick Douglass shows why the debate was settled long ago.

010

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I’m spending this week thinking through birthright citizenship for a thing I’m writing. So it’s with some real feeling that I can say how cool it is that Trump desperately wants to keep someone on our team whose citizenship he would like to revoke.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Happy Fourth! Here’s my last op-ed of the series I wrote for the Fayetteville Observer on the 250th. This one is about the thing everyone was mad about while I was growing up: what would the founders think of our ginormous federal government? www.fayobserver.com/story/opinio...

fayobserver.com

USA 250th: The founders wanted a government stronger than we admit | Opinion

America’s founders feared weak government more than strong government, and the Constitution reflects their desire for a flexible federal system.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Comparing what the founders might have thought of the “revolutionary” protests of Black Lives Matter contra January 6th. How do we read one kind of disruption versus another kind? www.fayobserver.com/story/opinio...

fayobserver.com

America’s revolutionary founders weren’t fans of endless revolt | Opinion

As America nears its 250th anniversary, what would the founders say about protest, unrest and January 6? A look through history.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

What Would the Founders Do About Immigration? Here’s my answer for the Fayetteville Observer. Spoiler alert: They generally approved; it’s complicated; and it might not matter. You can subscribe for a month for only a buck. www.fayobserver.com/story/opinio...

fayobserver.com

What did the founders think of immigration? It's complicated. | Opinion

From Washington to Lincoln, America’s leaders wrestled with immigration, revealing a legacy more complex than today’s politics suggests.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Here’s a piece I wrote about how the founders might think of America today: the first of four surrounding the 250th. Obviously there’s a more value in local journalism than my nattering, but you *can* subscribe for just a dollar. www.fayobserver.com/story/opinio...

fayobserver.com

What would the founders think of us? a Fayetteville professor asks | Opinion

As America nears 250, what would the founders think of today’s diversity of voters and presidential power?

001

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Historians of this era will eventually have to think really hard about America’s president believing both in what Putin told him about the Russian Army’s ability to overpower Ukrainian drones, and in his own military’s ability to overpower Iranian ones. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/o...

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Not everyone supported the fourteenth amendment. But the people who voted for it knew that it was meant to give birthright citizenship: they had discussed the consequences, including for then-unloved and unpopular people. Receipts: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Trump Says Birthright Citizenship Was Only for the Children of Slaves. He’s Wrong.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

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...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Marco Rubio Is Failing Western Civ

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

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...

nytimes.com

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

010

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

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.

020

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

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...

nytimes.com

Opinion | The Trad Life Fantasy Was Never Real

001

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

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!

010

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Removing this photo inappropriately disparages this American. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/c...

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

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...

paycomonline.net

Adjunct Instructor of History

...

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

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...

notus.org

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.

010

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

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

010

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

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...

abrahamlincolnonline.org

Abraham Lincoln's 1855 Letter to Joshua Speed

020

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

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

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

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.’"

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

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

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

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.

110

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

A friend shared this, and it works better for Any Day than for That Day. Mean every word. youtu.be/l21GFyOO8Ug

youtu.be

David Lynch's Weather Report 12/16/22

YouTube video by DAVID LYNCH THEATER

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

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.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

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...

thenation.com

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.

030

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Happy American Bonfire Day! The receipts are all there. Worth reading them year by year.

000

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

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...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Enough With the Land Acknowledgments

Instead of proclaiming performative acknowledgments of Native peoples, institutions should establish strong relationships with Native nations.

040

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

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...

slate.com

Jimmy Carter Did Away With This Extravagant Presidential Tradition

Wait, there was a presidential yacht?

010

Patrick W. O’Neil @paddyoneilio.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

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.

000