The internet brings word that a middle school teacher has been hauled off to the nuthouse before he could cause any harm to children.

He’s a man with many names, and the books he has written have raised the concerns of the Dorchester County Board of Education and the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office.

Early last week the school board was alerted that one of its eighth grade language arts teachers at Mace’s Lane Middle School had several aliases.  Police said that under those names, he wrote two fictional books about the largest school shooting in the country’s history set in the future.  Now, Patrick McLaw is placed on leave.

Dr. K.S. Voltaer is better known by some in Dorchester County as Patrick McLaw, or even Patrick Beale.  Not only was he a teacher at Mace’s Lane Middle School in Cambridge, but according to Dorchester Sheriff James Phillips, McLaw is also the author of two books: “The Insurrectionist” and its sequel, “Lillith’s Heir.”

Those books are what caught the attention of police and school board officials in Dorchester County.  “The Insurrectionist” is about two school shootings set in the future, the largest in the country’s history.

Phillips said McLaw was taken in for an emergency medical evaluation. The sheriff would not disclose where McLaw is now, but he did say that he is not on the Eastern Shore. The same day that McLaw was taken in for an evaluation, police swept Mace’s Lane Middle School for bombs and guns, coming up empty.

The Atlantic, the source of this story, has this to say about the report.

Imagine that—a novelist who didn’t store bombs and guns at the school at which he taught. How improbable! Especially considering that he uses an “alias,” which is apparently the law-enforcement term for “nom de plume.” (Here is the Amazon page for The Insurrectionist, by the way. Please note that the book was published in 2011, before McLaw was hired.)

According to an equally credulous and breathless report in the Star-Democrat, which is published in Easton, Md., the combined efforts of multiple law-enforcement agencies have made area children safe from fiction. Sheriff Phillips told the newspaper that, in addition to a K-9 sweep of the school (!), investigators also raided McLaw’s home. “The residence of the teacher in Wicomico County was searched by personnel,” Phillips said, with no weapons found. “A further check of Maryland State Police databases also proved to be negative as to any weapons registered to him. McLaw was suspended by the Dorchester County Board of Education pending an investigation and is no longer in the area. He is currently at a location known to law enforcement and does not currently have the ability to travel anywhere.”

I’ve tried to reach the sheriff, so far unsuccessfully, to learn whether McLaw’s “inability to travel anywhere” means that he is under arrest. It is somewhat amazing that local news reports on this case don’t make clear whether McLaw is under arrest, and if so, on what charge. It is equally astonishing that the reporters on this story don’t seem to have used the words “First Amendment” in their questioning of law-enforcement officials, and also astonishing they don’t question the Soviet-sounding practice of ordering an apparently sane person who has been deemed unacceptable by state authorities to undergo a psychological evaluation.

It would be useful to know if McLaw is under investigation for behavior other than writing two novels—and perhaps he will be shown to be a miscreant of some sort—but so far, there is no indication that he is guilty of anything other than having an imagination, although on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, as news reports make clear, his imagination is considered an active threat.

The problem with the militarization of the cops, along with the proliferation of laws, is it erodes the trust between the citizens. The cops marching around in their Star Wars outfits, in addition to looking ridiculous, make people feel like prisoners. When you give these ridiculous blockheads carte blanche to hassle the people, everyone assumes the worst when the cops are involved. A lot of suburbanites still shrug and assume it is just the poor getting jammed up, but it is happening everywhere.

There could very well be much more going on here than has been reported. You would like to think there has to be some evidence before the cops can drag a man off to the nuthouse. But that’s the thing. There has been so much of this crap going on there’s no reason to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. When “swatting” is an everyday occurrence now, it is safe to assume everyone has figured out what’s going on with the cops and is normalizing it.

There has to be a balance for ordered liberty to work. Too much order and you get the chaos of tyranny. Too much liberty and you get the chaos of the mob. Stories like this one look like a strange blend of mob rule (fear of the weirdo) and law-abusing cops who think they are game keepers. What should have been a meeting between the man and his supervisor to make sure his side job was not a bigger problem is suddenly the run up to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.