It's itself a neutral-to-good thing probably but has negative as well as positive side-effects. It's likely better for a country that's otherwise culturally diverse than the alternative; were America more homogeneous in other ways that would not be the case.
I'm a bit surprised you say that, since you've reacted with horror to some very "American" quotes and comments on this before.
Because they're flippant and don't seem to recognize that there are downsides to this or that things could be different. Besides, my personal feelings about the 'American' attitude are different (much more negative) than my 'official' position as an aspiring sociologist of religion.
The only downside I've ever heard brought up that wasn't based on an extreme conservative/reactionary mindset built on worshiping "tradition" is that it permits the rise of some churches that serve mostly to enrich their leaders and things like prosperity theology.
But an open democratic process permits the rise of some extreme fringe movements (be they crazy fringe parties in Europe or the Tea Party in the US) and that doesn't mean that such attitudes toward democracy and openess (as opposed to say a Singapore system) are a bad thing.
I kind of have to take exception to your use of the word 'extreme', since a mindset incorporating
any degree of conservatism at all is by definition concerned with tradition. There need be nothing extreme about it--unless you think that any conservative idea is extreme by definition, which makes the term meaningless.
Anyway I gave a pretty orthodox sociology-of-religion answer, which, yes, does treat tradition and cohesion and identifiable derivation from past habits and values as legitimate things for a society to be concerned with. Which doesn't mean that other, perhaps conflicting things aren't worth being concerned with as well.
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