Transcript:

CHARLIE ROSE: George Will is here.  He has been observing and writing about politics and culture and sports for more than 40 years.  He writes for The Washington Post and for Newsweek.  He`s also a news analyst on the ABC News program "This Week."

His eighth collection of columns comes out today.  It is called One Man`s America: The Pressures and Provocations of our Singular Nation.  I am pleased to have him here and talking about America and one man`s America.

Let me just begin, welcome, first of all.

GEORGE WILL: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me begin with this, the pleasure and provocations of our singular nation.  They used to word a word called American exceptionalism.  Do you believe in that?

GEORGE WILL: Yes, I do but with an asterisk.  American exceptionalism really means that America is not immune to but resistant to some of the afflictions that have befallen other nations.

The asterisk is that, because America is exceptional and because America is founded on professedly universal values, this might give rise to a kind of imperial — benevolent imperial impulse, that it`s our job to export American exceptionalism.  And I don`t believe in that.

CHARLIE ROSE: We should not be proselytizers?

GEORGE WILL: We should be proselytizers but not carrying them abroad on the point of a gun.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well — or is this nation building…

GEORGE WILL: Nation building.

CHARLIE ROSE: … and the idea of we shall create democracies like our own and the world will be a better place?

GEORGE WILL: Well, yes.  When Tony Blair addressed the joint session of Congress two months after Baghdad fell, he said this is a myth that our values, meaning western values, are a product of our culture.  No, they are universal values shared by ordinary people everywhere.  That`s a kind, generous, sweet-tempered thought, but it`s false.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, let`s just talk about which values did he mean and which values do you mean?

GEORGE WILL: Well, that`s the question.  I think he meant pluralism, tolerance, democracy, freedom understood as we understand it.

The trouble is billions of people in the world don`t define freedom the way we do, don`t value it the way we do.  They prefer institutionalized piety, military glory, ethnic solidarity, national honor.

CHARLIE ROSE: But do you speak as a nation or individuals in those nations prefer that?

GEORGE WILL: Both, both.  Both.  If…

CHARLIE ROSE: Let`s take, for example, the French.

Do you think the French have the — in terms of values, individually have different values.  There is a whole series of values that I think the world shares.  Wonder (ph) if it`s some kind of relationship with however you perceive religion for you?

Two, it is a genuine desire that — that you live a life in which you can make it — circumstances good for your family.

GEORGE WILL: I think the…

CHARLIE ROSE: Really, it is to have some individual choice about how well life is.

GEORGE WILL: I think that`s true.  But at that level of generality, it`s not so useful.

When you get down to more concrete matters, the French, like the Europeans — less than some but like Europeans generally — are in flight from the idea of nationhood, because national histories were so bloody and calamitous in the 20th century that in the 21st century, they seemed to want to transcend nations.

That impulse is not — doesn`t exist in the United States.  Americans are still cheerful nationalists.  Patriots.

CHARLIE ROSE: I don`t know — I don`t think the French are in flight.  I mean, I don`t think the French did anything.  Just take the French.  We can go to the British or we can go to the Chinese or wherever, Scandinavia.

But the French are in love with nationhood.  They`re in love with who they are.  They believe that they have a superior culture.