Over the past two weeks we’ve had the opportunity to overindulge in the absorption of the verbosity-fest that each of our major political parties offers us every four years. Though, due to our new Coronavirus world, the format was untraditional, the menu of partisan and often hypocritical platitudes served up by the speakers championing both parties was once again the standard fare for both political party conventions.
Seeing the ease with which certain politicians from both sides sashayed away from positions they once fervently embraced within their easy memory and recollection to comfortably espousing as an intractable tenant the polar opposite stance, was a performance of such slick footwork that the astute viewer might describe it as the political equivalent of Dancing With The Stars.
Although I must admit that, even in my quarantined pandemic world, I could not watch an entire evening of either convention, at least some of the political discourse I witnessed reminded me of the speech given by a forgotten Mississippi legislator in 1954 that gave rise to the phrase “If-by-whiskey” which, according to Wikipedia, is “a relativist fallacy in which the speaker’s position is contingent on the listener’s opinion.” It is doublespeak that when adroitly applied allows the speaker to appear to affirm both sides of an issue seemingly then agreeing with whatever side a particular listener supports. This allows the master of this slight-of-hand dialogue to take any position without truly taking any. So many of today’s politicians have honed this talent to a fine art, but, on their best day, they couldn’t come close to matching the granddaddy of them all; the GOAT of all the subsequent “If-by-whiskey” successors.
On Friday, April 4, 1952, a 29-year-old Mississippi state representative named Noah Sweat delivered a speech at a dinner banquet for his fellow legislators. He was nearing the end of his only term in office. Mississippi was debating the legalization of liquor at the time and the young Rep. Sweat (whose nickname was “Soggy,” by the way), was invited to speak to the controversy.
The speech he delivered that evening purportedly took him several weeks to compose, and has gone down in the annals of rhetorical history. He spoke passionately, brilliantly and with great conviction… for both sides:
My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:
If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.
But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.
This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said. – William F. Buckley
Cheers! …and have an AWE-full Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque