The world parliament scene is followed by two which are wholly instrumental.
For centuries before the first English colonists travelled to the New World, Parliament had been regulating the private ownership of firearms.
The second scene, a sung debate in an imagined world parliament, is quite different: unaccompanied human voices, singing mainly in groups but with occasional dramatic solos.
"Being a congressman, Bill Richardson came to the U.N. and worked it like it was the world parliament," said James P. Rubin, a former assistant secretary of state.
Above all, perhaps, we need a directly elected world parliament, whose purpose would be to hold other global bodies to account.
In other efforts to foster world peace, he founded the Centre Intellectuel Mondial (later merged into the League of Nations Institute for Intellectual Co-operation) and proposed such organizations as a world school and university, a world parliament, and an international court of justice.
Unlike in previous rounds, however, this time the general assembly – the UN's world parliament, in which all 193 member states are represented – is determined to do more than act as a rubber stamp.
Or that even if there was a world parliament it would be beset by the same worries about national sovereignty and interests that lead British public opinion to be so sceptical of the European Union?In the end, though, the argument is impossible.
According to the Committee for a Democratic UN, "The UNPA concept is the a first step towards a democratic world parliament".
