But why should we care at this late date?

Because Plato turned the trial of his master, Socrates, into a trial of Athens and of democracy. He used it to demonstrate that the common people were too ignorant, benighted and fickle to entrust with political power. In Plato's "Apology," the contrast drawn between the nobility of Socrates and the grim verdict of his juror-judges indicted democracy in the eyes of posterity. And thanks to his genius, no other trial except that of Jesus has so captured the imagination of Western man.

Plato made Socrates the secular martyred saint of the struggle against democracy. He stigmatized it as "mobocracy." Yet this was the very same "mob" which applauded the anti-war plays of Aristophanes when Athens was fighting for its life against Sparta. (No such antiwar plays were allowed, by either side, during our last two World Wars). This was the same "mob" whose eagerness for new ideas, and its readiness to hear them, drew philosophers from all over the ancient world. It made Athens - in the proud words of Pericles - "the school of Hellas," the university of the Greek world. It is the high repute of Athens that makes the trial of Socrates so puzzling.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/ifstoneinterview.html

You might introduce a sort of anti-philosophy - a la Michel Onfray - by referring them to somewhat more dissident philosophers and the violent imperialism some of them dared criticise:

Stoic theory had earlier on favoured the notion of a mixed constitution as the best form of government, as indeed, Panaetius had regarded the Roman Republic. Thus Cicero hard argued that the victories of the Roman people were at first maintained by their justice and excellence: -

. . . the truth is that as long as the empire of the Roman people was maintained through acts of beneficence rather than injustices, wars were waged either on behalf of allies or for the empire, wars were terminated with clemency or only the necessary harshness, our senate was a refuge for kings, populaces, and nations, our magistrates and rulers strove to win glory only from the equitable and faithful defense of provinces and allies; and thus our rule could more truly be called a paternal protectorate of the entire earth rathe than an empire. This policy and discipline declined gradually, and in truth after Sulla's victory we abandoned it. (Cicero On Duties 2.26-28, in Pangle 1998, p256).
...
At a later date we find the emperor Domitian killing the Stoic adherents Junius Rusticus and Herennius Senecio because they wrote in praise of Thrasea and Priscus, and later on banishing all philosophers from Rome and Italy (Suetonius Domitian, viii, 2-4).

http://www.international-relations.com/History/Stoics.htm

Yet another mistake in the enlightened view of human nature which explains the failure of the enlightened political project.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS