September 11 isn’t supposed to be a normal day on the calendar.

And certainly not in New York.

Nearly 3,000 people were murdered that morning. Husbands went to work and never came home. Wives boarded airplanes they never got off. Children went to school and spent the rest of their lives missing a parent.

Twenty-five years later, September 11 still isn’t history to those families.

And there was a time when presidents understood the particular weight of this day.

George W. Bush certainly did. Whatever else anyone thought of his presidency, September 11 was never just another square on his calendar. He understood what had happened, who had done it and why.

Donald Trump understands that too.

In between, something changed.

Barack Obama increasingly spoke about September 11 and Islamist terrorism through the lens of America’s treatment of Muslims. His administration seemed far more comfortable warning Americans about Islamophobia than it was confronting the ideology that had actually produced the attacks.

And that wasn’t occurring in a vacuum. During the Obama years, America’s political conversation about immigration, refugees, Islam and assimilation changed dramatically. Michigan and Minnesota changed with it.

I thought much of Obama’s Iran policy worked against American interests too. Different issue, same instinct: extraordinary concern about offending the people America needed to confront, considerably less concern about the Americans asking why.

Twenty-five years later, look where that political evolution has taken us.

The city where it happened.

A city whose skyline still bears the scar.

And now the Democrat governor of New York and the Democratic mayor of New York City are being asked by retired Port Authority police officers to stay away from Ground Zero on September 11.

How in God’s name did we get here?

John McDevitt, president of the Port Authority Retired Police Association, has asked New York City........

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