Party lines cannot always be defined in terms of "Republicans" and "Democrats" even when the divisions between them seem especially pronounced. This is most definitely true of the debate over impeaching President Clinton, which is in reality an explosion of major cultural differences. PNS editor Walter Truett Anderson, author of "Evolution Isn't What It Used To Be" (W.H. Freeman), is a political scientist who writes widely on technology and global governance.

It's pretty easy, if you followed any of the debate on impeachment in the House of Representatives, to conclude that the whole affair is just a matter of party politics -- the Republicans in Congress hate President Clinton and they're out to get him.

That is not entirely inaccurate. Most of the Republicans in Congress do hate Clinton and they are out to get him. But it doesn't account for the intensity of feeling the impeachment aroused in many people, the passionate expressions of opinion -- pro and con -- that came blazing through the mails and over phone lines and on the Internet. What we're dealing with here is a particularly intense -- and potentially very destructive -- outburst of what some people call the culture wars.

You can find culture wars everywhere. Within the churches, they are fought over changes in doctrine and the ordination of women. In school systems, advocates of "moral reasoning" oppose those who say children should simply be taught what's right and what's wrong. They rage around issues such as abortion, homosexuality, freedom of expression in the arts.

They reflect different values, different belief systems -- even, if you go deeply enough, different ideas about what's true and what's false. And they definitely reflect different visions of society.

According to sociologist James Davison Hunter, author of "Culture Wars," the war is between orthodoxy and progressivism. Those two sides are defined by ideas about morality. Orthodoxy is committed to an "external, definable, and transcendent" moral authority while progressives tend to see the rules as capable of being redefined "according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life." The fundamental difference is between obedience to hard and fast rules versus a willingness to try to figure out what's right and wrong in the present situation.

If you doubt that such matters play a part in the current doings on Capitol Hill, listen to one of the principal players, Rep. Tom DeLay, who described himself as "a man of rules," and characterized the impeachment controversy as "a debate about relativism vs. absolute truth." And Rep. Henry Hyde offered Auschwitz as a relevant example of "what happens when the rule of law doesn't prevail." Progressives of course jumped on this, arguing that there's a big distance in terms of seriousness between Clinton's grand jury testimony and the Holocaust. But for the orthodox, that doesn't matter -- a rule is a rule, and an infraction should not go unpunished.

The culture wars do not allow neutrality, because we all have our views about moral authority. Mine favor the progressives -- I don't feel comfortable with any kind of orthodoxy, and I don't find it at all difficult to separate Bill Clinton's extramarital activities from his performance as President.

I do not, in short, look to Washington, D. C. for guidance on personal behavior. The recent outbursts of righteousness from that neighborhood make me inclined to agree with columnist Russell Baker's remark that a politician holding the high moral ground is like a hog in a bathtub.

Although culture wars have been heating up since the 1960s, both sides have deep roots in American culture and history. Orthodoxy came over with the Pilgrims -- who, having escaped one orthodoxy, proceeded to enforce their own with a vengeance -- and is now enshrined in several different American religious establishments. "Progressive" thinking has been around so long that historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once wrote that "the American mind is by nature and tradition skeptical, irreverent, pluralistic and relativistic." Both sides tend to generate strong feelings -- orthodoxy because people passionately desire to defend what they believe to be deep and eternal truths, progressivism because people outside of orthodoxy view it as the worst kind of tyranny.

And both sides have their shortcomings. Progressives are not good at setting any limits on behavior, and have a hard time taking religious conviction seriously. The guardians of orthodoxy are altogether too willing to impose moral order by force if they can't do it by persuasion.

That is the tragedy of culture wars in general, and of this one in particular: They can hurt enemies, but they cannot win lasting victories in the process. Whatever the outcome of the impeachment, it will not bring about the shining triumph of family values and simple rules that many hope for. Because an enormous number of Americans do their moral reasoning in different ways, and these styles of thought are not subject to Congressional vote or political deal-making.