Haunted By the Past and Judging By Our Own Standards

We'll meet at Sakura Japanese Restaurant in Mechanicsburg for stimulating, scintillating discourse along with some scrumptious fare.

Questions we will focus upon:

Politicians often have their past votes, their past actions, and their past opinions, used against them in elections and in the media. Would you consider supporting a candidate who once held a highly objectionable opinion (in your view) that they say they no longer hold?
Are there some opinions or actions that you would always hold against them?

Does it make a difference if you believe a politician genuinely changed their opinion, or simply changed an opinion to reflect a changed constituency? (If politicians are simply meant to reflect the will of voters, why not simply replace them with advanced polling machines?)

What if rather than a candidate for office, the person in question is a friend or relative, someone you know relatively well?

To take this a step further, should we judge those of an earlier time in our nation’s history for actions and opinions that were common and/or accepted in their time that have come to be frowned upon today?

Consider different cultures? Can we rightfully judge any of their actions by our own standards?