Does this come off as sanctimonious and preachy to anyone else?

You can turn virtually every step of their dialogue back around at them. Is he claiming "kids these days" should be more grateful that the ignorant whelps of yesteryear had enough rage and luck to stumble onto some meager improvements for the next generation? Is he asking that those who perpetrate the actions leading up to generation-killing conflicts, like Vietnam, be forgiven because "things aren't as bad for you as they were for us"? He uses traffic accident statistics as a way to shrug off the atrocities in Vietnam, for fuck's sake. "Sure, there's a place where thousands of kids, just like you, are sent to slaughter for the sake of a proxy conflict our generation created, but why not get upset about the tens of thousands who die because of a machine and a mode of transportation our generation also helped build?" Also, any mention of the native Vietnamese is curiously absent. What about the homes and lives being destroyed in part because your great country felt it had to put the boot to the "Reds"?

I'm not young enough any longer to blame my elders for all the problems in the world. The only point these two make that holds any water is that if anything is going to improve, you have to take responsibility for making it better. But this speech just sounds like someone doing the exact opposite: "We fucked shit up, sure, but despite our best efforts, life is still more comfortable for you now than it was for us then; therefore, you shouldn't be bitching about us, the ones who lacked foresight 30 years ago, but yourselves, the ones who lack foresight now." What a bunch of self-righteous bullshit.

No offense to Mr. Webb, of course.