Ross is aware of the differences between American and European conservatism. I wish he'd made more of those differences in his article.
But in the world of politics things are rarely as black-and-white as you'd like them to be. Every movement or ideology has its sects and fringes that make contact disreputable or reprehensible ideas.
Even left and right aren't the complete antitheses people often take them to be. Chauvinism, extremism, and a lot of other unpleasant things pop their heads into any ideology or movement.
And even if American and European philosophies were hermetically sealed and had nothing in common, this guy did spend a lot of time on US sites with a particular take on practical politics.
He took what he wanted from those sites to build up a worldview that certainly diverged from mainstream American (or European) conservatism. So even if there was some deep philosophical incompatibility, you, I, we, still have to come to terms with just what it was he got from American sites and authors and bloggers.
You aren't Ross Douthat's audience. Given that NY Times audience, what it's already read in the paper about the attacks, the assumptions that they have, the conclusions that they draw, Ross does a pretty good job of responding and rebutting to their take on this.
As I have made the case here repeatedly, they are. Within every population will exist r-selected and K-selected psychologies. The r-selected psychologies are designed by evolution to function under conditions of copious resources and high mortality. Liberal ideology parallels the r-selected psychology exactly. Averse to competition, promiscuous, and unconcerned with child rearing methods. Produce lots of offspring fast and early.
K-selected psychologies are what arise when there is no external mortality. There, a population increases, until there are not enough resources to support everyone. Suddenly competition for resources becomes necessary to survive, and individuals evolve to compete more effectively. Conservatism parallels K-selected psychology exactly. Competitive (from Capitalism, to War, to self defense), prone to espouse abstinence until monogamy, and overly concerned with two parent, high investment child-rearing, from demanding decency in culture to espousing “family values.”
These two ideologies are merely intellectual manifestations of the primitive psychologies one finds in nature and in r/K selection theory. Individuals inevitably stray, given the complexity of our intellects, but the ideologies are diametrically opposed, and pitted in direct competition within our species.