According to Wikipedia:
One day during the year 399 BC, Socrates went on trial and was subsequently found guilty of both corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and of impiety, and as a punishment sentenced to death, caused by the drinking of a mixture containing poison hemlock.
You read wikapedia? That is kind of lazy. You should have read more. Disparaging Socrates doesn't disqualify his opinion of the value of Gadfly's. He was scapegoated on trumped up charges for saying the gods they believed in did not hold the powers they claimed, which became a claim of 'impiety and corrupting thr minds of youth' for challenging the religion and teaching a different idea.
A teacher who challenged the religious belief about mythical gods, society feared that these gods would be angry, used a trumped (appropriate analogy) up charge that he was corrupting minors and impiety. They found him guilty and gave him the death penalty. Who on the jury would vote otherwise, for fear of being accused of being a co-conspirator.
What you should appreciate about him is that when found guilty, ths system permitted the guilty person to suggest their punishment. Socrates suggested that he receive a reward, that pissed off the jury and they voted a death sentence. Rather than fleeing, which he could easily have done, he said that "...he owed it to the city under whose laws he had been raised to honour those laws to the letter.”
Sounds like our current president and his relationship with everyone not him.
Sounds like you.
But Socrates accepted the penalty and stole the show, taking his own life.
Thank you for asking. I appreciate the comparison, fortunately we live in a world where these activities are not a death sentence.
Your Gadfly.
. But why?