During the period in the US where power was most abused by bureaucrats and executives, they were also extremely local to the people they were wielding that power against.
I'm not trying to figure out some personal-freedom-vs-collective-justice conundrum, I'm asking a very concrete question about whether the quoted statement is even true. In one highly notable case affecting tens or hundreds of thousands of americans and lasting for nearly a century, that wasn't the case. That calls the assertion into question, I think.
> Differences in world view are less significant when the bureaucrats and executives with power over your life live nearby instead of in another city and state.
That can happen. But what also did happen is that the bureaucrats and executives with power of your life were also very much under the influence (and in some cases, direct control) of local (and non-local) wealth. That influence/control can be very hard or impossible to tackle with only local politics (history has shown this to be clearly the case, many, many times).
But there’s no limiting principle to the above. You’d have more protection of individual rights in Europe if France could overrule Poland through undemocratic organizations like the ECHR: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-.... That would probably trigger devastating political consequences, however.
At the end of the day you have to make a decision about how much you care about democracy and self determination versus individual rights. I don’t think that in 2022 we are striking the right balance on that.