My publisher asked “What do you want readers to take away from your writing?”
If I really were Socrates, I would have the exact same three-part answer in 399 BCE Athens as makes sense to me now in 2015 in the USA.
To get people to really think for themselves – as reasoning individuals.
To get every citizen to feel “entitled” to rational explanations from the politicians, the leaders, the “experts and authorities” and the professional educators and not be required to meekly submit to their “prestigious” opinions and dictums. (Rational explanations are rational because the How and Why can rationally be explained to others without resorting to generalities or clichés or other forms of bullshit.)
If you do not independently know and judge history, you can and will be naively misdirected by others. It happens all the time.