To tope or not to tope

TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig. In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race. With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate Spaniard out of his possessions! From the time when the Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every conquered port it has been the same way: everywhere the nations that drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially augmented the nation's military power.

(Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary)

On the other hand...

From the teachings of Didram Bodo Sime, 6:6

(Obloquies against the Toper and his Drink)

Motto:

It is not good to inebriate nor to souse, using swillage, near or far beers, or distillations.

Expansion:

The toper is a fuming bore, a loon, a mongrel, a social mockery. Often he soils his clothes and commits malditties. He smells and belches; his familiarities trouble all decent folk. His songs and tirralays offend the ears. He often gives breath to scurrilous conjecture.

The toper suborns good fruit and gives it to decay, and the good person who wishes to enjoy the sanivacity and good savor of the wholesome fruit is bereft and must raise this outcry: "Why have you despoiled me, O toper, of my fruit and given it to filthy decay?"

The toper performs foolish dances. He postures like a clown and cleans his ears with broomstraws. He is prone to perform pugnacities upon good and earnest folk who chance to halt upon their way to chide him for his folly.

(Jack Vance: The Book of Dreams)