Karl, thanks for the long, thoughtful post.
Here's where we differ, I think.
You are thinking of par as a measure of how many drives away the basket is. That's not what par is. In fact, there is a much better statistic to use to tell us number of drives to reach the hole: it's called Hole Length. You simply divide by how far you can throw.
Par is, and has always been, the expected score of a really good player.
Golf: "Par" is the score that a scratch golfer would be expected to make for a typical hole. Par means expert play under ordinary conditions, allowing two strokes on the putting green.
Disc Golf: Par is the score that an expert disc golfer would be expected to make on a given hole with errorless play under ordinary weather conditions, as determined by the Director.
Note they are both expected score. Neither is about distance or drives.
Scratch golfers expect two strokes on the putting green, so that doesn't conflict with par being the expected score. You could remove that part and par would come out the same.
Disc Golfers don't expect two throws on the putting green, so the definition used to say "allowing two throws from close range". As anyone who has ever played disc golf knows, we expect to make one putt after throwing an upshot; and close range is where we expect to do that. So that definition also did not conflict with expected score.
Unfortunately, that phrase about two throws was mistakenly interpreted (maybe by highly vocal players were could wield the gravitas that comes with having played the "real" sport of golf) to mean two putts. So that phrase probably contributed to the myth that "ace-able=par 3, 2 drives = par 4", etc. Because that is not what par is, the phrase about the last two throws was taken out of the definition. Now, par is unequivocally expected score.
We don't need to "reach" a hole to expect a 3. We can land the length of an upshot short, and still expect to get up and down in 2 more. So, some holes that are not ace-able are par 3.
Sometimes, we don't need a drive before making our upshot. So, some holes that are ace-able are par 2.
So, disc golf par is very close to what golf par actually is, even though disc golf par is not close to the shortcut way of figuring par that works OK for golf.