FSMD: Adlai Stevenson

 

Source:Wikipedia- former Governor Adlai Stevenson (Democrat, Illinois) I believe in the 1960s. (Don't quote me on that)

"Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (/ˈædleɪ/; February 5, 1900 – July 14, 1965) was an American lawyer, politician, and diplomat.

Raised in Bloomington, Illinois, Stevenson was a member of the Democratic Party.[1] He served in numerous positions in the federal government during the 1930s and 1940s, including the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Federal Alcohol Administration, Department of the Navy, and the State Department. In 1945, he served on the committee that created the United Nations, and he was a member of the initial U.S. delegations to the UN. He was the 31st governor of Illinois from 1949 to 1953, and he won the Democratic Party's nomination for president in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections.

In both the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections, Stevenson was defeated in a landslide by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination for a third time at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. After President John F. Kennedy was elected, he appointed Stevenson as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Stevenson served from 1961 until his death in 1965 from a heart attack in London, following a United Nations conference in Switzerland." 

From Wikipedia 

With the way the Democratic Party has moved left in the last 10-15 years, there's a been a lot of talk and even debate about what is really a Progressive, who are the Progressives, and what is progressivism. Even with Socialists finally coming out of the political closet in America (calling themselves Democratic Socialists) you still have leftists in and outside of the Democratic Party who prefer to be called Progressives (even though a lot of what they believe is actually regressive) or Liberals (even though a lot of what they actually believe is illiberal) and trying to redefine what it means to be a Progressive in America. 

If you believe that a Progressive is someone who believes in progress and that government can play a constructive role in creating progress in society, then Adlai Stevenson who was Governor of Illinois in the 1940s and two-time Democratic Party nominee for President in the 1950s, as well as U.S. United Nations Ambassador in the early 1960s, I believe along with his son Adlai III who served in the U.S. Senate in the 1960s and 70s, would be two people that you would look at when it comes to being a Progressive in America and what Progressives actually believe in. Because they were two men who believed in progress through government action, but not government control of everything. 

Adlai Stevenson