If by "if-by-whiskey" you mean the fallacious, flip-flopping, cowardly practice of pandering, then certainly I am against it. But, if when you say "if-by-whiskey" you mean the circumspect, open-minded, responsive practice of consideration, then I am certainly for it. This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

Is this a fallacy? It seems that the speaker is clearly being satirical, especially given that he prefaces his speech with

" On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be."

And then proceeds to argue for both sides of the issue.

Perhaps politics in 1950's Mississippi were just as solidly partisan as our national politics are today. In that case, perhaps Mr. Sweat's satire was meant to try to influence the partisans to, at least somewhat, understand the other side.

"If by C programming, you mean writing unreadable code with memory leaks that is impossible to support and violently breaks in unpredictable ways, then I am against it.

If by C programming, you mean writing elegant code that dances with the machine producing blazing code, optimized to the technology and problem at hand, then I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not compromise."

I really hate to say it, but I haven't seen this if-by-whiskey technique so formally named, but it does give me great insight into political double-speak. And perhaps it'll give me a few outs from tough situations. :-)

This immediately made me think of abortion and the terms pro-life and pro-choice. I am both pro-life and pro-choice by the literal meanings, but many in the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" camps seem to use their terminology to paint the other side as bad (i.e. the opposite side is "anti-life" or "anti-choice" by default, even though that's not necessarily true).

The given example is more clarification than fallacy. He's against bad things and for good things? What could be clearer? :)

Perhaps it's a fallacy that you can be both in favor of a particular thing and also against that same thing?

I have the feeling that if I heard that speech I would actually believe that Soggy is both for and against whiskey. I don't think I'd vote for him, but I would believe him.

I was half expecting an alcoholic connotation of Paul Revere, e.g. two if-by-whiskey, one if-by-beer.

Why is it considered a "fallacy"?

This seems like a more schizophrenic version of the no-true-scotsman fallacy. In that it can be used to show support for something (often some ideal) whilst distancing oneself from any negative consequences of that.

Highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth-Edition/...

Which talks in detail about the "informative" and "affective" connotations of words (it's a lot more entertaining than it sounds). Only slightly related, but I was just reading in the book how we have the terms "light meat" and "dark meat": because ladies and gentleman in 19th century Britain couldn't bring themselves to say "leg", "thigh" or "breast" – even of a chicken!

Seems to be related to the straw man:

The question is "Should whiskey be prohibited or not?" but he takes it to be "Is there anything good or bad about whiskey?" or "Do I think whiskey is good or bad?".

undefined

They need to add this to http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/. And if you haven't been there, you should check it out!

If you follow the link to Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat Jr's wikipedia page...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_S._Sweat

...you get a great audio recording of the speech (over 50 years later, and not by Noah)

This is like Microsoft. It is great when it works and isn't causing troubles, but a bottomless hell when forced to look at the event viewer...

undefined

I've heard of this!!!

Just politicians being politicians.

He condones what is widely seen as good about whiskey and he condemns what is widely seen as bad about whiskey. That is the stance he's getting across, and it's one which is also sort of (unsurprisingly?) the sum total position of the people he represents.

He's against irresponsible drinking to the point where it will cause harm to oneself and others, but for responsible drinking to the degree that it will confer benefits.

I don't see a fallacy here.

I think the canonical example on Wikipedia is false in that it is historically where the name comes from, but it's not itself a fallacy at all.

From the description of the fallacy the "if-by-whiskey" fallacy would be someone taking either one side, or the other.

So the "canonical example" is not at all an example of the fallacy but simply the roots of the name of the fallacy.

A litmus test of moral cowardice.