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BRUUH The conservative embrace of rugged individualism is largely economic selfishness. By abdicating the responsibilities inherent in contributing to the tribe, you are able to keep more for yourself. Further, by narrowly defining who does or does not belong to your tribe, you are able to reduce the number of people you are having to contribute to. That's generally not all conservatives though. I think social conservatives outnumber economic conservatives. But a lot of those social values stem back to economics.
Let's take marriage, for example. Marriage was not originated to promote human happiness. It was not originated to raise children. There were family units before marriage. Some would stick together. Some would meet then separate. They worked in all kinds of various ways from tribe to tribe and sometimes within a tribe. Formal marriage, however, was a recognition of a family unit comprising one and only one man and one or more women. These formal recognitions were made to formalize inheritance rights, to manage property, and other economic concerns. It also "protected" men from concerns of pouring resources into potentially raising another man's child by reducing the incidence of uncertain parentage.
Traditional Marriage is not the one man and one woman who love each other model that people think of when the words are used today. Traditional Marriage was an economic arrangement very much designed in favor of rugged individualism and against communal tribalism.
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The reason liberals are more accepting of a wide array of personal behaviors is because they tend to work the other way. Instead of trying to shrink the area of responsibilities to self and family, they seek to expand it across the entire community. This means diminishing returns for harder work as those who do more are covering for those who do less. The people who do less are also guilty of economic selfishness. But there is more social self interest that appeals to people as well. Part of keeping the sphere of responsibilities large means being more open and accepting to each other. You excuse things they do that you wouldn't do because you want them to stay in that sphere. And if you are making those tolerances for them, they in turn are expected by social contract to make those tolerances for you.
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Ultimately, the big conservative/ liberal split in the US right now centers around how big "the tribe" should be. Who are the people you should care about and expend resources on. Conservatives seek smaller tribes and liberals seek larger tribes.
Smaller tribes are better able to agree on social norms, giving rise to things such as what you consider family values. This comes at the cost of apathy towards the well being of those outside the tribe.
Larger tribes are better able to leverage diverse skillets to build more efficient economies that ensure everyone has at least the basics. This comes at the cost of finding social norms such large and diverse groups can agree on.
