Oh, sure. But it isn't a cop out. If you live someplace you hate, it makes a lot of sense to try to find a better place. You'll notice that if various leftist special interest groups would simply follow that philosophy, then they wouldn't be trying to control every place they are. If you don't like prayer in school, then move to some place where they don't have prayer in school. People spend way too much time trying to change where they are rather than trying to find a place where they'd be happier.
The stereotype that many place on southerners who are proud of their roots, be they good or bad, is too easily excused or ignored. Such criticism is never leveled, for instance, at cherokees, whose ancestors fought with the south, whos owned slaves, and who were guilty of gross injustices within their own culture (something not unique to anyone).
I can understand southerners being proud of their roots up until the point where it turns into anti-Americanism. A lot of Southerners died fighting under the US flag as well as under the CSA flag. To claim that the US government is a foreign power occupying the South seems to dishonor all those men from the South who fought in wars for that "foreign power", does it not?
Bashing Southern heritage is the only PC-safe pastime that is encouraged in public anymore, and it is just as wrong as any other baseless insult.
There are plenty of PC-safe bashing that can go on -- men, Christians, Caucasians, Europeans, etc. It is open season on Southern heritage in large part because it is conservative and Christian. The assumption that Southerners are racist is as much a result of 20th Century segregation and Jim Crow laws that Southerners still alive today fought to preserve as slavery, which happened a century-and-a-half ago. Also, please bear in mind that white conservative northerners are also often painted as racists simply for expressing conservative ideas.
You said a mouthfull there. How true.