What is that quote from Thomas Jefferson?
Something like, “The tree of liberty is watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots, it is its natural manure.”
Personally I think the tagline is stronger without the last clause, but who am I to criticize Jefferson.
If this man’s fate and brave example help to spark an uprising I think he could fairly be considered a martyr to liberty.
For Republican Rome and in the time of the American revolution the ideal of liberty had a sacred, quasi-religious value.
We are soft. We have, collectively, lost the capacity to understand and appreciate liberty and the concepts understood so well by the Founding patriots. If his smile was in the knowledge that they could kill the body but not the spirit, he would be a martyr to liberty. If his killers/murderers can comprehend that, they should be experiencing a cold fear over their future existence.