This gloomy view is countered somewhat by the long history of substantive democracy in American thought, indicated by the views of the anti-Federalists and other founding-era figures such as Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's view of democracy included both classical liberal protection of individual liberty and a classical republican element, drawn from the ancient Greeks and from eighteenth century Scottish moral philosophers, in which democracy begins with people actively shaping a society grounded in social relationships (Sheldon 1991; Wills 1979). For Jefferson government is not top-down, but begins with the individual in a "pyramid structure in which each higher level is held directly and immediately accountable to its next lower level" (Matthews 1986, 126)