break a butterfly on a wheel

Especially after The Times ran that editorial about breaking a butterfly on a wheel.

He criticised, in a 1967 editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?"

The Times ran the famous editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?"

"To break a butterfly on a wheel".

Mr. Astbury tosses off lines like "Who would break a butterfly on a wheel?"

Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel Who Found Machu Picchu?

The hard rock song "Soul Asylum" from The Cult's Sonic Temple album opens with the line "Who would break a butterfly on a wheel?"

Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel Who's That Girl Wil Morgan Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

He cites as one example the prosecution of Mick Jagger and the subsequent intervention of The Times in Jagger's defence in 1967 ("Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?")

A July editorial by William Rees-Mogg 'Breaking a butterfly on a wheel' was to help free Jagger and Richards, not so Frazer, or John Hopkins, who was sentenced to nine months for marijuana offences on 1 June.

When Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were on trial for drug charges in London in 1967, The Times of London defended them in an editorial whose title paraphrased Alexander Pope: "Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?"

In the late sixties, police forces briefly went into overdrive arresting household name pop stars who openly espoused drug use, staging raids on the homes of members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, leading to William Rees Mogg's "who breaks a butterfly on a wheel" Times editorial.

From the 'Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel' episode, to the heavy police influence on early festivals, to the quasi-ban on the Pistols Anarchy Tour, of which only 7 of the 20 dates were allowed to go ahead, this phenomena has always existed in one form or another and I imagine it always will.