How did Ted Cruz happen?

“…It wasn’t until Ted was well along in grade school, though, that Darragh grasped he might be intellectually gifted.

From Spring Branch and nearby Jersey Village, she chauffeured him to a series of private and church-related schools. Some were far from home. They included Montessori and Southern Baptist institutions, as well as a school that he recalled had many Jewish students and another, the Awty International School, that his mother said enrolled children of French diplomats.

“I wasn’t that aware that he was precocious,” Darragh said. “He was my only child.”

Ted, though, said he began “cutting up” in third grade at West Briar School until teacher Gail Jennings “had the good sense to just give me a triple work assignment. … I was bored.”

At Awty and the Christian school Faith West Academy in Katy, Cruz liked sports but soon came under the tutelage of Rolland (rhymes with “Holland”) Storey. Storey, a retired Houston utility company public-relations executive, created a speech contest to instill in young people an appreciation of free-market economic theory.

“It had a profound impact on my thinking,” Cruz said.

Austrian free-market economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were staples of the curriculum at Storey’s Free Enterprise Education Center. He had teens learn the “10 Pillars of Economic Wisdom,” several of which Cruz can still recite, including pillar No. 2:

“Government is never a source of goods. Everything that government gives you, it must first take from you.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20120428-senate-candidate-ted-cruz-aims-to-pick-up-mantle-of-reagan.ece