The right to selfishness

Much of what we hear is about citizens' duties, the so-called common interest, improving efficiency, making systems work.
Yet nations are composed of people, and persons are human beings before being a citizen.
It's a basic human right to choose one's own values and, correspondingly, to live according to those values as long as they don't violate a just law (in causing concrete and illegitimate harm to others).
While selfishness may be distasteful (if, given this attitude, oddly prevalent), it's certainly an attitude that people can choose and should be able to choose, and in a sense it's important given that those who call for pulling together for the "common good" usually have bad motives, and even someone who calls for this for good reason sets a precedent for a more nefarious character to exploit the same sentiment later on for bad reasons.