For the sake of argument, what cultural elements bind all Americans? That would be proper American culture. Yet in that line you only find the political system, the legal system and the economic approach, all of which are liberalism/positivism.
Every other aspect of culture didn't become synchretic, it became niche. Difference.
Soul food, or jazz or carnie culture or surfer rock or any thing one can come up with is a regional niche or sociological niche that largely leaves the rest of Americans unaffected. A proper synchretic culture could be said to be the Druze who took different prior elements and created a new result for the ensemble of their population.
So all in all he is correct. The thing that really is 'All-American' if you will, are all abstract extrapolations from a specific subset of academia, meaning pure artifice. The loans that are made from other culture are purely the outer layer of it, usually for the sake of consumption, whether Chinese new year or Cinco de Mayo who are dates for shopping not because really care if it's the year of the sheep or because the battle of Puebla is of significance to them. Once more, the artifice of advertisement and marketing.
And if you want to hear it from the horse's mouth how all of it is a rupture with the past, and not anyhow and organic blend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americ..._republicanism
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