This column is part one of an “opinion” series. Part II will appear on Tuesday, April 19. Scroll to read the lyrics while you listen to the message.

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen ([EDITOR’S NOTE] and mayors, supervisors and councilors and GOBs)
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

SOURCE: Thank you, Bob Dylan! The Times They Are a-Changin’ is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan’s third studio, released in January 1964 by Columbia Records. [Editor’s NOTE: Maureen Dowd, a New York times columnist, wrote a column a few days ago entitled, “Dylan’s trip to China a sad sellout.” In the column, she points out that Dylan deleted this song from his repertoire because his hosts (the government) objected to the message. She says, “The idea that the raspy troubadour of ’60s freedom anthems would go to a dictatorship and not sing those anthems is a whole new kind of sellout – even worse than Beyonce, Maria and Usher collecting millions to croon to Moammar Gadhafi’s family, or Elton John raking in a fortune to serenade gaybashers at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding.” Dictators fear truth – situational ethics for money is almost as bad as being a despot, we think. Shame on you, Bob Dylan.]