I agree "ought" is related to "is." However, I would distinguish based on whether you mean "physical is" versus "consciousness is" (or non-physical is).
I don't think "ought" can be measurably derived, or derived from mere "physical is." But I do think each person not only can, but must, resolve ought from non-physical is. For that, none of us has any choice but to make choices. And we do factor our choices based on such facts as we encounter. If one were making a choice only about the order in which to put on socks, I don't apprehend a moral issue. But if a friend were in danger of frostbite, it may make a difference.
Intuition and empathy (i.e., the Golden Rule) become important, above measurable facts. But intuition and empathy depend upon the quality of one's appreciation for one's fellows. If one sees one's fellows as cripples, dullards, and soulless zombies, one may rationalize that one "knows best" and should exercise opportunity, right, and need to take power from such others in order better to organize their efforts, both for one's own mental comfort as well as, secondarily, for such others "own good."
In short, Liberals, regardless of factual basis, simply see themselves, on faith, as being ordained to decide what is for "the greater good." In their "calibrations," they ignore the need of others to experience feedback from learning to look out for, and decide for, themselves. That is, they ignore the humanity in everyone who is not of their class or who does not buy into their stunted philosophy.
Liberals do not see everyone as having their own dignity to be charged under the Golden Rule. Rather, they see themselves as being ordained, rather religiously, with secularly leveraged power to force everyone else to be charged. Theirs is not the Golden Rule but the Iron Rule of Fascism: Force others to do for the collective as you would have them do for the collective. In finding ways to exercise such force, they are "liberal."
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Over the years, we've lost so much in terms of what defines us. Maybe that's what has left us with not much more than our hollow selves, i.e., the "cult of me." Our founders thought we at least stood for being liberals for preserving liberty. Then socialists led us to equate being liberal with being liberal about imposing social collectivism, i.e., Big Government. But this was to be a godless Big Government, so you could pleasure your glands all you could stand. Lincoln thought he was conserving liberty, with a new birth of liberty, under God. But new liberals, i.e., fascist collectivists, equated God-respecting conservation of liberty with being socially repressive in order to enforce Biblical literalisms. The idea of being a conservor of liberty, under a government with just enough assimilable values to preserve such liberty, got confused with being an enforcer of religious oppression, rather than a preserver of religious freedom. Having lost our definitions relating to what it means to be Americans, many among us have regressed into adolescent "me-ness." We need to take back what it means to be socially conservative Americans, i.e., Americans under just enough government to preserve freedom of expression, enterprise, and religion. IOW, Libertarians under a sustainable government and culture.
Source of Jefferson's Unalienable Rights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unalienable_rights
Hutcheson elaborated on this idea of unalienable rights in his A System of Moral Philosophy (1755), based on the Reformation principle of the liberty of conscience. One could not in fact give up the capacity for private judgment (e.g., about religious questions) regardless of any external contracts or oaths to religious or secular authorities so that right is "unalienable." As Hutcheson wrote, "Thus no man can really change his sentiments, judgments, and inward affections, at the pleasure of another; nor can it tend to any good to make him profess what is contrary to his heart. The right of private judgment is therefore unalienable."
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Wiki Is-Ought Problem ("Hume's Guillotine"):
"In other words, given knowledge of the way the world is, how can one know the way the world ought to be? The question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible. This complete severing of "is" from "ought" has been given the graphic designation of Hume's Guillotine.
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Note: The notion of "God" or "Natural Law" seems often to be used as a convenience to rationalize or inspire a faith that we "ought" to be empathetic of one another. The inference from intuiting that we "ought" to sustain decent civilization leads often to intuition or faith that some higher, common, more objective source ("God") sponsors such inference. The idea seems to be that without such inculcation, the general public would tend to be so mistrustful of one another as to necessitate constant surveillance in order to sustain decent civilization.
Re: "Not all muslims are evil."
Well, that's not the point! Granted, it's not for any of us to judge whether any person's heart is on balance more evil than good.
But we can make that judgment about books. I can see reading the Bible to apprehend a connection with the way people thought in the past. But consider the Koran: If it were not called the Koran, and if so many backward peoples did not look to it as their guide to living, then ask: would you want your child to read that book as a moral guide? Would you want your country to use it to guide its laws? If someone put the essentials of that book into a set of moral guides, would you consider that a guide to the good side or to the dark side? When people tell us we should or should not do so and so, of course we should judge whether the prescription is good, bad, even evil. When someone lists a bad set of guidelines in writing, of course we should judge whether such a guide is good, bad, or evil. When someone wants to use tax money to favor the propagation of urgings that are evil, of course we should be on guard! This does not have to do with judging souls. Leave that to God. But we most certainly are responsible to make good choices! And when we see urgings to make bad choices, there is little virtue in declining to point it out, merely because someone says, well, I was raised to consider such bad choices as my religion. An astute commenter wrote to O'Reilly, to ask why it is that the Left is so quick to condemn the tea party for actions of a few, but so slow to condemn radical Islamists for far more heinous actions of so many.
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